


Blood of Heaven and Earth

by eliddell



Series: Blood of Heaven and Earth 'verse [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: (can't believe I forgot to tag that), Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But he'd probably stab anyone trying to give him one, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Hojo is His Own Warning, I seriously messed with Jenova's history, M/M, Male impotency, Multiple First-Person Narrators, Sane Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Seph needs a hug, Slow Burn, Tags Are Hard, Very mild d/s, Vincent is not Seph's father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-05-13 07:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 75
Words: 223,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19246207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: Zack Fair, bored and restless in the basement of the Shinra mansion and worried about his superior officer, who's so absorbed in old documents that he's forgetting to eat and sleep, goes poking around the place and finds a coffin.Vincent Valentine wasn't sure what he'd thought would happen if he ever met Lucrecia Crescent's son, but he didn't expect that their first conversation would be about how you go about forging the contents of a research journal.Hojo is disappointed that Sephiroth destroyed his "mother" and left Nibelheim sane, and switches to his Plan B.  Which involves waking somethingelsethat should never have been touched.In the background, the Planet is arguing with itself as the echoes of a two-thousand-year-old civil war begin to reverberate once again.And in the middle of all this, poor Vincent is wondering if it's creepy to be attracted to the son of a woman you once had a terrible crush on, and, if not, how you go about suggesting you're interested in a romantic relationship to a man whose survival has always depended on maintaining his emotional isolation.





	1. Zack

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose I'll start at the beginning.
> 
> About twenty years ago, I began writing a 'fic with the working title _Winter_ , which was never completed or posted anywhere. This is not that 'fic, but it draws elements from it. That means there are ideas here that predate everything except the original game. I think I've twisted them around so that they fit into the framework of the subsequent material, but I'm hampered in this by never having played _Crisis Core_ or _Before Crisis_. 
> 
> I did allow one small divergeance from the canon timeline and placed Nanaki/Red in Midgar four years early, at the time of the Nibelheim Incident, which is where this 'fic diverges from the canon.
> 
> This is also a story of ridiculous length. I should have started posting it a couple of weeks ago, but I looked at the amount of work involved in re-reading it for continuity and my brain sort of went on strike. When I finally sat down and girded my loins to do the job, it took me most of the weekend.
> 
> As usual, I had no beta reader for this (the way I write isn't conducive to keeping one). Hopefully I didn't miss too many typos while wrestling with a spell-checker whose vocabulary is smaller than mine and intended for a different nation's dialect of English.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : _Final Fantasy VII_ belongs to Square-Enix or whatever they're calling themselves these days, not to me. The specific text of this fanfic falls under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license to the extent that this does not infringe on Square's rights.

**Zack**

"You know, sometimes you really piss me off," I said, and kicked the base of a desk, sending a cloud of dust into the air as echoes chanted _me off, me off, off, off_ back at me. This place was way, way too high-ceilinged to have ever been a normal basement. A cave, maybe, that had been chiseled out at the bottom to make more space for the lab. 

Seph didn't pay any attention to me. Okay, so he didn't _usually_ pay any attention to me when I did stuff like that, but he was ignoring me harder than usual this time, with his nose in those old files and journals. He didn't even look up when the dust drifted toward him, just waved it away without even so much as a nasty line about me finding some cleaning supplies and making myself useful if I was going to hang around. 

He'd been acting weird ever since we'd gotten to Nibelheim. I mean, he was _always_ weird, but his baseline-weird wasn't the kind that would make him break into an old house that had nothing to do with our mission, and _especially_ not the kind that would make him sit down and start digging through files without exploring the place completely, first. Usually, he was eighteen different kinds of paranoid. He didn't _quite_ walk into his office back in Midgar with a drawn sword and impale the chair cushions before sitting down, but I was pretty sure it was a close thing sometimes. 

And now he was sitting with his back to an open room in a building we hadn't completely explored yet but already knew was infested with monsters, flipping pages and scowling. 

Really not like him. 

I wondered if he had a headache too. I'd had one ever since we'd gone up to the reactor. It had faded a bit on the way back down, but gotten worse when we'd entered this house and worse again as we'd climbed down to the basement. For a second there, when we'd hit the bottom of the steps, it had almost sounded like I could hear someone whispering to me. A woman's voice, I'd thought, although with a whisper you can't really tell. But Seph hadn't reacted to the sound, and when I'd whispered a question of my own to Cloud, who'd been tagging along behind, he'd said he hadn't heard anything. 

I'd waved it away. It wasn't the first time I'd ever experienced an auditory hallucination—hell, it's one of the things they warn you about in SOLDIER training, that enhanced hearing can make you string faint sounds together until you'd swear you'd heard something that just wasn't there. And the whispering voice hadn't been any louder than Cloud's heartbeat. Just another phantom, I'd thought, but now I was starting to wonder. 

I flexed my knees. Considered doing a few squats, to pass the time if nothing else. I couldn't help Seph with the files because he refused to tell me what he was looking for. Maybe he didn't know himself. But . . . 

I gritted my teeth as I heard the rustle of another page turning. And made my decision. 

"If you don't need me here, I'm going to do another pass through the building and make sure there aren't any more monsters. Then go get us something to eat." 

"You don't have to stay here, Zack. I'll rejoin you at the inn when the replacement truck arrives to pick us up." 

I'd spend long enough dealing with the great General Sephiroth that I was now a master of tooth-gritting, and of tooth-grinding, too. Telling him to go back to the inn and get some damned _sleep_ already would just lead to him ignoring me again. Never mind that it had been eighteen hours since we'd entered the house and that had been in the middle of the afternoon. I was starting to feel tired myself, and I'd escorted Cloud back to the mansion door before midnight and told him to go get some rest, but Seph wouldn't budge until he was damned good and ready. Even though it was just about noon again. Nagging him about eating wouldn't help either, although shoving the food under his nose sometimes did. 

_I did not sign up for this._ I mean, I hadn't expected it to all be glamourous parades or fights against monsters or Wutainese ninjas, but I hadn't expected being his second-in-command would involve so much babysitting. 

"I should be back in about an hour. Don't do anything I wouldn't." 

Well, okay, Seph had mellowed a _little_ bit since I'd first gotten to know him, because he just sighed instead of getting snippy with me about insubordination when I said things like that now. I left the room before he got tempted. 

Hmm. So. Short passageway back to the stairwell. No monsters that I could see, but there was that other door, the wooden one that was half-rotted off its hinges. Anything that could be a danger to a SOLDIER could go straight through that rotten mess like a hot knife through butter even if it wasn't smart enough to turn a doorknob. 

When I thought about it, it was kind of weird that Seph had led us right past it without opening it. Almost as though he'd known where the lab was, even though he'd said when we'd left on this mission that he'd never been to Nibelheim before. 

Angeal had told me once that Seph had told him that he'd been kept somewhere outside of Midgar until he'd been five or so. It couldn't have been here, could it? This creepy old building, and the lab? Ugh, what a way to grow up. Although if that was true, he and Cloud were from the same town, which was . . . cute, or something. I didn't know how to put it, exactly. 

Okay, so. Rotten wooden door. The handle wouldn't turn, but when I pulled on it, a chunk of the door came off, and a nice hard SOLDIER kick had it in pieces all over the floor a few seconds later. 

The room on the other side was full of coffins. Old ones, just as rotten as the door. Except for the one centered along the back wall. It was much newer, solid-looking, with a padlock dangling off the side. 

I blinked at it. I mean, who locks a _coffin_? And then leaves it on display instead of burying it? What were they afraid was going to get in? Or . . . out? 

Hey, maybe I'd just gotten lucky. Maybe I'd found something that Seph would have to get up and check on. And once I had him out of the lab, I might be able to convince him to pack all that old paperwork up and haul it home instead of busting his ass trying to examine it all here in as short a time as possible, so that he didn't distort the timeline of the mission too much and let on that he'd found . . . whatever he'd found. 

I'd figured out that much about what was going on, anyway. That he didn't want Shinra to know. His relationship with the C-suite execs wasn't that great, although you had to be pretty close to him before you could see it. They kept it really quiet. 

Anyway—locked coffin. I didn't have a key, and I didn't know the first thing about lock-picking, but, well, you know that old line about how when all you have is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails? The best tool I had on me was my sword. So all problems looked . . . like monsters? 

Maybe I needed to find a new metaphor. 

I pulled my sword and thought about the coffin a bit. I didn't want to accidentally cut apart whatever was inside until I knew what it was, so I aimed my slash at the edge of the thing, where the hardware supporting the lock was set into the black-painted wood. The Buster Sword didn't go through cleanly, but I blamed that on the condition of the wood, and it did make a nice, splintery mess that made it easy to pull the lock off. 

I waited for a minute or so, but nothing started opening the coffin from the inside, so I put my sword away again. _Really, Zack, this thing has pretty clearly been locked up for years. There can't be anything alive in there._ Something mechanical, maybe, but I'd never met a robot that my trusty sword and I couldn't disassemble in ten seconds flat. 

I tried to lift the lid. It wasn't heavy—well, to a normal man it might have been—but I couldn't get a proper grip on it. It was pretty obvious that it had never been meant to come off once it was on. 

So I used my favourite tool to solve the problem again, prying at one corner of the coffin lid and hoping I wasn't damaging the edge of the blade too much. Fortunately, I got the lid up far enough to stuff my fingers in before I snapped my sword. That would have been shameful, destroying the sword Angeal had trusted me with. And potentially lethal if there were still more monsters running around. 

One good heave got the coffin lid up over the lip and let me push it the rest of the way off. Or at least, that was what I meant to do. I'd revealed a couple of inches of the coffin's interior when a hand shot up from inside and tried to pull the lid closed again. It almost made me wet myself. I mean, there really _was_ something alive . . . or not-quite-dead . . . in there. And that shouldn't have been possible. 

I'm good with monsters. Really good with monsters. But not so much with ghosts. Maybe that was why I'd been hearing stuff in the stairwell, given that this place had been giving me the creeps from the beginning . . . 

Focus, Zack, focus. This had been a Shinra lab. From what little Seph had let slip since he'd started delving through the records, Hojo, the creep to end all creeps, had worked here. This was probably just some kind of old experiment that they'd left behind so they didn't have to waste cargo space hauling it back to Midgar. 

The creature hadn't done anything hostile. And that hand had looked human. Maybe it would understand if I talked to it. 

I knocked on the lid of the coffin. "Hey! Is someone in there?" 

"Go away." A man's voice, deep and rough. I could tell that much even with it muffled. 

"No can do, buddy." He hadn't quite been able to pull the coffin lid back square yet, so I was able to grab onto it and hold the last sliver open. "Security, sorry. Once I get a good look at you, and you tell me who you are and why you're here, then I can leave you alone, but not before that." It sounded good, anyway. 

A soft snort. "Security. Of course. I suppose it's . . . fitting. Very well." 

This time the coffin lid went easy. I pushed, he pushed . . . with one long-fingered hand and one armoured claw, but I wasn't going to complain. A couple of seconds, and we had the coffin open enough for him to sit up, and . . . well, hell. Cloud had told me once that there had been rumours of a vampire hanging out at an old building at the edge of his hometown, and this guy sure looked like one, all pale skin and messy black hair and glowing red mako eyes. And a high-collared red cape over a black shirt, too. 

The eyes were the weirdest part. I mean, mako is _green_. SOLDIERs can have blue or green or gold or hazel-y eyes, depending on what colour they started out with before the mako treatments, but never, ever red. 

Coffin-guy also looked like he hadn't eaten in a couple of weeks. Except that he might have been down here a lot longer. The dates on the old newspapers we'd found upstairs, that had been in such crappy shape that they'd crumbled when I'd prodded them with a finger, had been from twenty years ago, give or take a few months. 

"I'm Major Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class," I introduced myself. "Second-in-command to General Sephiroth," I added. Sometimes that opened doors where nothing else did. 

" _General_ Sephiroth?" Coffin-guy frowned, and blinked a couple of times. "He's here?" 

I nodded. "In the lab. You know, when someone introduces themselves, you're usually supposed to introduce yourself back." Normally I'm not that pushy, but this guy struck me as the kind who would just clam up if I didn't poke at him a little. 

"Vincent Valentine." He stopped for a moment, then added, "Administrative Research." 

And that was even weirder than the eyes. A lot of the jobs the Turks did needed them to blend into the background, so they were never, ever enhanced. Although . . . I checked. Yeah, he had a gun, and those were mostly a Turk thing. SOLDIERs mostly carry swords—I mean, why bother with enhanced strength if you're just going to be waving a gun around? 

"I was part of the security team for the lab," Valentine added. "And I failed to protect those who had been entrusted to me. I locked myself up here as penance." 

Which didn't explain the eyes. Or why there had been a lock on the _outside_ of the coffin. Or much of anything else, really, but my brain had already seized on the one thing that was most important right now. 

"If you were security for the lab, then you must have some idea of what was going on here back then. The experiments," I amplified. 

"I was never a scientist." 

_No, you were an experiment yourself._ Funny how it had taken me this long to figure it out, but it was the only way of explaining those eyes. 

"Yeah, but there are no records of this stuff _anywhere_ except some journals and stuff that were left behind in the lab itself. And Seph—General Sephiroth—has been down here for the better part of a day already, reading through it all." He'd reacted to Sephiroth's name, so maybe . . . just maybe . . . "He won't stop to take care of himself properly, even though I keep telling him that the papers won't run away. I'm hoping that if I dangle someone who actually _knows_ about the experiments in front of his nose, I might be able to get him out of this stupid musty basement for a bit, get some proper food into him . . . maybe even get him to sleep for a few hours. Please help." And I gave Valentine my best puppy-eyed look, trying hard not to think about just how surreal this conversation was getting—had been from the start, really. 

Valentine shook his head, and I was flabbergasted when a corner of his mouth actually curled upward. "His mother was the same way—unable to stop once something caught her interest. Very well. I'll try to help you." 

He pushed the coffin lid the rest of the way out of the way, letting it land on the floor with a crash, then got to his feet, still inside the coffin. He stepped onto the edge, then jumped down, and for a second seemed to hover in the air, with that tattered red cape spread out like wings. Weirdest thing I'd seen since . . . No, I wasn't going to think about that. I just touched the hilt of the Buster Sword lightly for a second. Remembering. 

With my brain disconnected from my mouth for a couple of seconds, it was easy for, "You knew Seph's mother? Jenova?" to tumble out from between my lips. 

That hint of a smile vanished like it had never been. "Sephiroth's mother was one of the scientists attached to the lab here. Jenova was a specimen under investigation, not . . ." He paused, and I could see his eyes narrow. "Does he believe that too?" 

I nodded, and Valentine's good hand curled around the butt of his gun. 

" _Hojo_ ," he spat. Which I figured meant that he was at least three steps in front of me in terms of figuring this out. Okay, so I could see Doctor Creepy lying about who Seph's mother was, but why? What difference was it supposed to make? Especially if she was dead. 

Valentine was already on his way out of the room. Damn, he was fast. Moved like he was weightless, almost. Mako enhancement, obviously, but not quite the same kind they gave to SOLDIERs. I could hear my footsteps, but not his, as I followed him toward the lab at double-time, and _he_ was the one wearing metal sabatons. 

Seph must have sensed a stranger approaching, because he was on his feet with one hand on Masamune's hilt when I hit the lab doorway . . . and nearly ran into Valentine's back, because he'd stopped not too far inside, and what the actual hell? 

Seph seemed a bit puzzled as well. And wary. I was just so glad to see him looking at something that wasn't a journal or a file that I could have hugged Valentine. 

"You look . . . a lot like your mother," the Turk/experiment said, and Seph . . . froze. I wasn't sure what to make of that expression on his face, but it wasn't one I'd ever seen before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Vincent**

If one of the first things he'd said to me hadn't contained that name, I would have insisted on being left to return to my nightmares. But when he said "Sephiroth", I felt a wave of relief. That Lucrecia's son was all right, and apparently doing well for himself. _General_. If he was trusted with that much authority, it meant that he wasn't _broken_. 

And since this Major Fair was apparently close to Sephiroth, I gave him what he said he wanted. My name and affiliation, and the briefest of explanations for my presence in the building. 

I never expected him to ask for my help. How long had it been since the last time someone had done that? How long had it been since the last time I dared offer? Years, clearly. Years and years. The time since I'd lain myself down in the coffin was a smudgy blur of long intervals of sleep and half-waking in darkness, always wrestling with the voices in my head, but if Sephiroth was an adult now, it had to have been years. Decades. 

If I'd been a more demonstrative man, Fair's request might have made me laugh. How many times had I brought Lucrecia food, or put a blanket over her shoulders when she'd fallen asleep over a pile of documents? So I'd thought, with a warm feeling in what was left of my chest. And then Fair's remark about Jenova had slapped me in the face like a bucketful of ice water. 

Something was wrong. It just wasn't the sort of something I'd _thought_ was wrong. The nightmares that had coloured my every hour since I had entered my prison here flickered before my mind's eye again—Lucrecia's son dead, maimed by Hojo's experiments, or turned into the mad monster she had seen in dark visions, while I lay in my coffin, unable to help him because I couldn't even properly control my own body. _My fault . . . should have fought harder . . . my fault, my fault . . ._

I shook my head even as my feet propelled me forward, out of the old crypt where I'd been resting all these years, towards the lab. Sephiroth was alive, and apparently healthy enough and sane enough to serve as an officer in Shinra's military arm. The worst of the nightmares weren't real. But he _was_ being deceived, and perhaps setting that right would make up, in some tiny part, for my failure to protect him and his mother. 

I would talk, tell him as much about his beginnings as I could scrape together words for, then go quietly back to my dark dreams before I could lose control of the voices in my head again and accidentally hurt someone. 

I stepped inside the lab . . . and found myself frozen in place. Not because the man in front of me had his hand on a weapon, but because . . . because he . . . 

Lucrecia's hair and eyes had been dark. This man had glowing green eyes and silver hair, but the shape of those eyes, the lines of his nose and chin and cheekbones—those were a sharper, stronger, masculinized version of hers. I couldn't see anything about him that could have been inherited from his father, unless it was that faintly scowling mouth. Reaching over his shoulder to grip his sword, he should have looked awkward, but instead there was a certain dynamism to the pose, as though some artist had chosen to immortalize him in this moment. 

_She would have been so proud of you,_ was the only thought in my mind as cold, intelligent eyes raked over me. 

I fumbled for words, but could only find, "You look . . . a lot like your mother." 

He'd only just started removing his hand from the sword. Now he froze for half a second before it shot back up there to grip the weapon again. "Who are you?" Not a loud voice, but forceful. 

"Doctor Hojo's leftovers," Fair said from behind me. "Or so I figure. No offense, Mr. Valentine." 

I'd thought him stupid, but it appeared there was a mind under that spiky black hair after all. 

"Dangerous?" Sephiroth was asking. 

"Not to us, I think, sir." 

The burning green eyes narrowed as Sephiroth finally lowered his hand from the hilt of his sword. "Valentine, was it? You were here when this was an active lab?" 

"As part of the security, originally, before Hojo decided he wanted another specimen," I said wryly. 

He was already turning his back to me. "Then perhaps you can shed some light on all of this." His arm swept out in a gesture taking in both the mass of journals and papers on the desk nearest him, and those still stacked on the shelves beside the reference works. 

"That's the only reason I didn't persuade your Major Fair to leave me where he found me." Somehow, I tore my eyes away from Lucrecia's son and scanned the lab, and . . . wait. That wasn't right. 

I walked over to the lab bench huddled in an alcove between the shelves for a better look at the anomaly I'd just spotted there. I didn't have to draw a knuckle through the layer of dust to be able to see that it was . . . irregular. 

"Hey, what is it?" Fair was crowding me, trying to look over my shoulder. He was even taller than Sephiroth, who himself was of a height to look me in the eye. 

"Do you see that rectangle there?" I traced the edges with the forefinger of my good hand, keeping it an inch or so up off the surface. 

"Where the dust is thinner? Yeah, I see it. So there was something there, and it's been moved. More recently than the lab was shut down, right? So someone was here. Not you, I guess, or you wouldn't have said anything. And that space is about the right size for one of those journals. And that . . . doesn't really sound good, does it?" Fair concluded, again proving that he was far less stupid than I'd thought when he'd first woken me up. "Although really, I thought that everything about this stank from the start. Why would they leave all this stuff behind? It isn't really _hidden_ here—the monsters are powerful enough to keep the locals out, but a cadre of mercenaries could clean the place out in a day or two if someone really wanted to poke around. And anyone who tried to clean the second-floor rooms would figure out how to open up the stairs pretty quickly." 

There was a vague image of what must have happened in my head now, but parts of it were still refusing to fill themselves in. I needed just a little more information—just a little more proof of what I was starting to suspect. 

I turned away from the bench and went over to the desk where Sephiroth had piled the materials he was working his way through. One journal lay open, and I glanced over the spread pages and . . . no, that wasn't right either. 

I reached out with my left hand to pick it up and was half-surprised to see the brass-washed claw scrabbling against the surface of the desk, my fingers unable to bend the welded-on armour far enough to grip the journal properly. _Don't think about it._ Sorting this out was more important. 

I picked the damned thing up and placed it in my claw so that I could use my good hand to part the pages all the way to the roots. Yes. There it was. It was subtle, carefully done, but the materials hadn't been quite right to begin with. 

Putting the journal down again, I went over to the shelves and examined the ones that were still full, rather than the ones Sephiroth had already stripped for reading material. Yes, there . . . and there . . . "Did you touch these?" I asked, sensing someone looming over me again. 

"No." Sephiroth's voice, not Fair's, and when I straightened and turned, I found myself looking directly into green eyes. "What have you found?" their owner added. "More than just that someone came back here for his notes, I take it." 

I nodded. "That journal on the desk has been tampered with, and I doubt it's the only one." 

"Explain." He was watching me closely. Looking for signs of falsehood, no doubt. 

"The informational content was the first thing that tipped me off," I told him. "I remember Hojo being particularly annoyed about the Jenova specimen's ovaries. They'd atrophied while it was still alive, and he was unable to culture any ova. There were a dozen attempts by various methods, by himself and others. In the end, he gave up. That journal seems to be open to a record of the first attempt, but the page giving the results has been excised and replaced. The ink and paper are slightly different, and if you check the binding carefully you can see where the old page was cut out and the new one pasted in. It's all Hojo's handwriting, though, so he must have had a hand in doctoring it." I couldn't see anyone forging Hojo's crabbed chicken scratch. Trying to, maybe, but not pulling off an imitation I couldn't spot. 

The breath Sephiroth let out was too light and faint to be a sigh. "And your conclusions? Beyond the fact that all the information here is now suspect?" 

I gathered my thoughts. "For one thing, Hojo was paranoid enough to do this without enlisting any help outside the Science Department. If he had asked the Turks to do his substitution, it wouldn't be obvious that the dust had been disturbed, and the ink colour would have matched exactly." We'd always been taught to pay attention to detail. "I'm sure at least some of this was done to convince you of whatever lies they've been feeding you about your origins, although there may have been additional motivations and targets—it's difficult to tell without first checking to see what else was changed." 

Lucrecia's son frowned, just a twitch at the corners of his mouth. His right hand rose to rub at his temple while the left formed a fist at his side. He was left-handed—I'd noticed that earlier, with the sword. 

"Headache, sir?" Fair asked. "I have one too. Have had ever since the reactor. It got worse again when we came down here to the basement. Fumes or something. I think maybe we should go outside and clear our heads a bit." 

Sephiroth's head snapped around, and he stared at his subordinate. "Zack, have you . . . heard anything out of place since we came down here?" 

"Audio lucies, you mean? I had one at the foot of the stairs. A voice. I couldn't make out what it was saying, and Trooper Strife couldn't hear it, so I figured . . . Wait, does that mean you've been hearing things too? Seph, I think we both need to get out of here. Now." 

"I believe you may be right," the general said, his expression sour as he turned toward the door. He took a step forward, and I . . . hesitated. 

Years since I had left the coffin. Even more years since I had left the building. Exposing myself to these two men was one thing—they were clearly strong, seasoned fighters who might even be able to deal with my co-walkers if one of them decided to surface—but if I went outside, there would be ordinary civilians around. 

I sensed the hand that locked around my wrist like iron too late to be able to dodge it. 

"If you think that I'm going to let you escape before you've told me the whole story from the beginning, Valentine, then you need to think again," Sephiroth said over his shoulder. "It seems that you may be my only remaining chance at any kind of reliable answer about what happened here, and I am _not_ going to let that go." 

Just like his mother again. He wasn't going to release anything he found interesting until he'd researched it fully. 

Was I fooling myself, seeing so much of her in him? We'd only known each other for ten minutes. I'd never seen him as a child, only overheard the scientific staff discussing him while I was semi-conscious and strapped to a table with Hojo fiddling with my internal organs. 

Regardless, I let him pull me up the spiral stairs and through the secret door into the bedroom Hojo and Lucrecia had once used, which was even more dusty and generally the worse for wear than the lab. How long _had_ I been down there? Sephiroth was clearly past his adolescence, but his aging rate might have been affected by Hojo's experiments. 

Mine certainly had been, I realized as I caught sight of myself in a flyspecked, rotting mirror that hung in the hallway. I looked drawn and pale, but no older than I had been when I'd first lain down in that coffin. And there was no explanation for it other than Hojo and . . . well. 

_She was trying to save your life,_ I reminded myself, but it wasn't much comfort when the memory of how I'd woken up disoriented and in pain, with mako burning in my veins and strange thoughts that weren't my own percolating through my head, was surging up with sudden force. 

Down in the depths of my mind, something was stirring in its sleep, and I felt a light shudder run through me, a sudden panicked _no, not again_ running through my head— 

—and I was blasted in the face by the light of day. 

It must, I reflected as Sephiroth dragged me out onto the front steps of the old mansion, have been very near noon. The brightness hurt—it burned, and everything was suddenly so _noisy_ , the air full of distant voices and vehicle noises and . . . _can't hold . . ._ something growling in my head . . . _can't let any of them loose here—_

"Seph, I think you'd better let up on the poor guy for a bit. I mean, he's been down there in the dark for something like twenty years, and he's had Mako treatments—" 

"So it seems. My apologies, Mr. Valentine." The hand let go of my wrist. 

The loss of his grip put me off-balance at the worst possible moment, while I was wrestling with the voices in my head and my own fears, and my good hand flailed out, found leather, and gripped as I staggered against someone who stood like an unmoving bulwark, letting me cling until my feet were steady under me again. 

Boots. When my dazzled vision cleared, that was what I saw. Black boots, the skirts of a black coat, and my own sabatons and the tattered edge of my old thermal cape, all against a backdrop of weeds and cracked pavement glazed with sunlight. 

Behind me, someone was snickering. That had to be Fair, but when I raised my gaze, it was Sephiroth looking at me, with the kind of faintly puzzled expression Lucrecia had reserved for data points that fell outside the expected bounds of the experiment. 

"If you need to get my attention quickly, it's 'Vincent'," I told him as I let go—to let him know that I was back in working order now, as much as anything. "Turks aren't as formal as the military. I haven't been called by my last name since I was a new recruit." Had I even mentioned to him that I had been a Turk? Just to Fair, now that I thought about it. 

What a muddle I was making of all of this. I'd never been much for talking to people outside of a business context, but I felt like I'd forgotten what little I knew about the subject while I'd been asleep. 

"Vincent, then." A pause, and when Sephiroth next spoke, it was to his officer. "Zack, it looks like you were right about there being something wrong with that basement. It . . . isn't nearly so loud, up here." 

"You're still hearing something, sir?" Fair did not look happy. At all. 

"A bit. I can handle it." 

"You're sure?" 

Sephiroth's eyebrows quirked with exasperation. "I slept through worse in encampments during the Wutai War." _The what War?_

"Still, it can't be good for you. And I've still got a bit of a headache. I think . . . maybe we should leave Nibelheim. Go as far south as it takes for whatever it is to go quiet, and wait for pickup there, instead of in town. South is further from the reactor," the younger man added, "and it started there." 

Lucrecia's son returned his attention to me. "Can you manage that? On foot?" 

"Yes." In fact, it would probably be safer than staying in town, but . . . _What am I doing?_ I'd never intended to see the light of day again. 

_He needs what I know._ That was the important thing, wasn't it? He needed . . . and I had promised . . . 

"Good. Fair, go round up Strife and our baggage. We're leaving."


	3. Chapter 3

**Sephiroth**

That Zack had found someone alive in the bowels of that mansion was surprising. That that person had known—or claimed to have known—my mother was shocking. But what stunned me the most was something smaller and more subtle. 

There have consistently been three classes of people in my life: people who worship me, people who use me, and enemies. I suspect that if one considers the population of the world as a whole, there may be more of the first, but those allowed to get close to me have usually been the second or the third. They comprise most of Shinra's executive and scientific cadres. Only a few other SOLDIER Firsts—Angeal, Genesis, and Zack—have ever failed to completely fit any of those three categories. 

And now there was a fourth person. 

Vincent Valentine strode silently by my side, keeping pace easily, unlike our sole surviving trooper. Then again, Zack's friend Strife was quite short. According to his file, he'd joined up the first moment it would be legal, the day after his fifteenth birthday, and he hadn't yet reached seventeen, so he might not have his full height yet. 

By contrast, Vincent, as he'd suggested I call him, was much of a height with me, with a similar length of stride, and the unsteadiness he'd shown upon leaving the mansion appeared to have passed off. 

I could have opened up a conversation with him as we walked. Should have, perhaps. He _knew_. About my birth, about why I had always been . . . different, even among the SOLDIER Firsts. About the questions I'd been delving through the basement of that damned mansion to answer in the first place. But now that I _could_ ask, I wasn't sure I wanted to. 

There weren't many things in my life that had ever frightened me, not since I was old enough to remember. A certain smile on Hojo's face. The Voice. And the possibility of finding answers to the questions that had only multiplied since I'd arrived in Nibelheim. 

«son» 

I willed it away—the word, and the pressure trying to worm its way into my thoughts. Despite what I'd told Zack, I was not all right. I hadn't been all right since the reactor. 

JENOVA. The word above the door at the reactor that led to a specimen packed in a tank of mako-laced fluid. But if Vincent had been telling the truth, that _thing_ could not have been my mother. And the doctored records in the lab—why? I had no doubt that this was a trap, but what had they been trying to get me to do? And this voice, that I'd been hearing in little snatches all my life, but only _clearly_ in that reactor and in that basement—what was it? 

«come to—» 

_Go away,_ I told it, and it fell back to muttering. Perhaps Zack was right, and this . . . force . . . was centered on the Nibelheim reactor. 

But why? The only thing at the reactor was . . . 

"Jenova." It was a mark of the stress I was under that the name slipped from between my lips. Loudly enough even for the trooper to hear it, because they were all looking at me now. Getting caught talking to myself was unacceptable, but pretending that wasn't what I had done required forcing more words out. "Hojo's research subject. What is her relationship to me?" I didn't use the word _mother_. Not about that . . . thing. If there was any possibility—any possibility at all—of my having had human parents, I was going to hang onto it with both hands even if it made my fingers run with blood. 

I'd been a weapon all my life. I would not be—I _refused_ to be—a monster as well. 

"You were exposed to Jenova's cells in utero." Vincent answered the question precisely. "As soon as your mother knew for certain that she was pregnant—she'd been testing regularly, so I expect it must have been only a few days after you were conceived." 

"Then it was . . . her choice. To do such things to me." 

Vincent's quick glance seemed . . . almost sympathetic. "Her name was Lucrecia Crescent, and it was her research project as well as Hojo's. Also, I don't think she had emotionally grasped that she was tampering with the life of a person yet. It wasn't until a month or so later that she started calling you anything other than 'the fetus'. It was a few weeks after that, about the time she started falling seriously ill from the Jenova cells, that I think she finally realized what exactly it was that she had done. That was when she tried to call a halt to the experiments, but Hojo persuaded her to continue. He said that the damage was already done, and that all she would do by stopping then was deprive them of the results." 

I had a name now, at least. _Lucrecia Crescent_. If she'd been working with Hojo, Shinra must have had a file of some sort. Maybe even photographs. Something I could use to cover over my mental image of that _thing_ I'd found at the reactor. 

"I wasn't pleased by the methods he used in his persuasion," Vincent was saying, voice so low I doubt a normal human would have heard him. "I confronted him about it, and he . . . shot me. In the chest, at point-blank range, with a large-caliber pistol." 

Now, _that_ I hadn't expected. Vincent's shoulders were hunched, hiding his face more thoroughly behind the collar of his cape so that I couldn't see the set of his mouth, but I knew what he had to be hiding: shame. The Turks were as highly trained in their own way as SOLDIERs. This man should never have let himself get so distracted that a civilian would be able to attack him successfully. 

"And my father?" That was an even more bizarre idea. Unless . . . "You?" 

The sound might have been intended as a laugh. "No. I had something of a crush on Lucrecia, but it was entirely one-sided. We were friends, nothing more. She was involved with . . ." His voice trailed off again, and I gritted my teeth, repressing the impulse to take him by the shoulders and shake him. No matter how frustrated and on-edge I might feel, any such show of emotion would have been unacceptable. 

And then Vincent forced out two more syllables. "Hojo." 

I stopped walking. I couldn't help it. My hands were trembling with the need to draw Masamune, to kill something, _anything_ . . . one weedy little man who hid his cruelty behind a lab coat and a clipboard. Hojo had always said he was my father, but there was no resemblance, so I had assumed he was lying, as he did about so many other things. I'd _had_ to believe it, or die of depression and self-disgust. 

There was. A hand. On my arm. 

"Seph—" The voice came from behind me, but the words were scrambled and smearing together and in my head— 

«he lies, oh my son, it is my blood that made you what you are and the rest does not matter» 

_Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up!_ There were still scraps of a child's desire for warmth and love inside me, and those made me want to reach out to the voice, to accept the future it promised me . . . but I wasn't a child. Or a fool. Every time someone had offered child-me any kind of warmth, it had been a trick or a trap, and this, too, was surely a deceit. 

There was a _hand_ on my arm. Even though people don't generally touch me, and I generally don't want them to. The glove was wrong for it to be Zack's. Then who . . . ? 

When I raised my head, it was Vincent's eyes that I met. The ex-Turk was looking at me sympathetically. I realized suddenly that I was breathing harder than I could ever recall doing in my life before. And shaking with the thwarted urge to action. 

"I think I would prefer to believe that the Jenova exposure destroyed most of that DNA," I said wryly, and behind me, Zack snickered. As I'd meant him to, although it wasn't really a joke. 

Willing my body to stand down from attack mode was more difficult, and by the time I'd stopped shaking, I felt like I truly had fought a battle here. In a sense, perhaps I had. 

A battle against myself. 

The voice in my head, and the pressure that had accompanied it, were finally fading. Perhaps it had worn itself out, trying to maintain contact with me when I was so far from the reactor. 

I had come, I realized, disturbingly close to giving in to it. I'd let myself get worn down. Too little self-maintenance, too much time spent trying to make sense out of Hojo's horrible handwriting. Too many unfulfilled needs and too much effort expended on other things. Laughable. 

Rest. Eat. Take stock. Those were the next steps. 

"Start looking for somewhere to make camp," I ordered. Valentine nodded as he finally let go of my arm. Behind us, two mismatched voices overlapped in a "Yes, sir!" 

The trooper. Damn, I'd half-forgotten about him again. He should never have been a witness to any of this . . . but what was done was done. I'd just have to convince him to keep his silence. Fortunately, I already knew a considerable amount about Cloud Strife's hopes and dreams, thanks to Zack's babbling. 

I'd give him everything he wanted, everything that was within my power to offer, and hopefully he would give me that one small thing. 

I considered the details as I watched Zack and Strife make camp—given my rank, I wasn't allowed to help unless there was an emergency, so I stood to one side, leaning against a rock and pretending to keep an eye out for monsters. Vincent, whose skills most likely didn't include wilderness survival, had found himself a perch in the crotch of a nearby tree. It was a relief to have someone trustworthy on lookout, even if he didn't know a wild chocobo from a Midgar Zolom. I certainly didn't trust _myself_ to be aware of unexpected arrivals right now. 

I was going to have to pull our young trooper not only into SOLDIER, but into my inner circle, such as it was. Well, Zack had chosen him, and he was much better at personnel-related tasks than I had ever been. If he'd decided it was worth going out of his way to befriend Cloud Strife, then the boy had potential . . . and I had no choice now but to see if we could push him into fulfilling it. 

With that settled, I turned to considering other matters instead. This . . . business . . . in Nibelheim had clearly been prepared years ago. Maybe even while I was still in Wutai. I still wasn't sure what they had—what _Hojo_ had—been trying to get me to do. Beyond getting me to listen to Jenova's whispers. Or had that been the entire purpose? 

In my mind, I sorted through the information from the journals and files I had read. Not reliable, no, but the background information that wound through it all like a thread would have been more difficult to falsify than the records of individual experiments. 

That they'd thought Jenova was a Cetra was clear. Personally, I doubted it. The Cetra had been a peaceful and humble people. The excavation that had recovered the Jenova specimen had found it in the middle of something that looked very much like an old battlefield. That didn't fit. Training me for the military didn't fit. Jenova's mutterings in the back of my mind, telling me over and over again that I was superior to the normal humans around me, didn't fit. 

Had Hojo made a mistake? 

The thought was enough to make me laugh, simply because it was so very like Hojo. I couldn't remember him ever admitting he'd been wrong about something. And if he had been . . . yes. He would have pushed his experiment forward at full speed anyway, ignoring all the warning signs. 

Regardless, it seemed that there was something they thought that Jenova, or a Cetra, could do for them. And when I'd shown no signs of doing it spontaneously, they'd . . . pushed. 

The question was, why now, after waiting for so many years? Had they decided that I wasn't really needed in my other capacities as leader of SOLDIER and Shinra's recruitment poster-boy? Or had they— 

Cold shot down my spine as, for a moment out of time, it crossed my mind that Zack might have betrayed me. He was the only one who knew I was considering leaving Shinra's service. Him . . . and any bugs that might have been within pickup range when I'd spoken to him. 

I let out a breath. Yes, of course, that had to be it. Not Zack. Never Zack. If he'd betrayed me, I might as well have let myself go insane. 

I'd been out of the lab for too many years to survive completely alone, it seemed. I was used to having someone there who fell into that fourth, nameless category of people who moved in and out of my life. 

The word might even have been . . . friends. 

Having sorted out the immediate past, though, I now had to look to the future. I couldn't leave that Jenova creature there at my back, whispering to me. If I did, I was sure Hojo would try something more direct to open me to her influence next time. Drug me into a stupor and lock me into that room at the back of the reactor with her, perhaps. Most drugs of that nature had little effect on me, but Hojo had all the records and knew what would keep me under for a few minutes. Which might be all it would take. 

But I couldn't go back there myself. I doubted it was even safe for Zack—he'd felt something of the pressure, and heard her, briefly. Suggesting that cell mass from Jenova might be included in the treatments given the normal SOLDIERs . . . that would be something to consider at another time. Vincent seemed unaffected by her. I would have to . . . send him and Strife? An unenhanced trooper and an ex-Turk whom I shouldn't have trusted nearly as much as I did. But I had no other options. This had to be done _now_ , before the pick-up Zack had called for arrived. The fewer people who knew about _any_ of this, the better. 

_But it's never going to end._ Not while Hojo and Shinra were still convinced I could give them . . . whatever it was they wanted. 

I was going to have to think about that in more detail too. But strategy isn't simple, and in a fight against Shinra, I didn't have that many dependable assets. Better to let it percolate at the back of my mind until we got back to Midgar. 

"Seph? He-ey!" Zack was waving a hand in front of my face. "I realize you're thinking deep and important thoughts and all, but the rest of us are going to eat, and if you don't come now there won't be anything left but ration bars!" 

"Not that whatever you've cooked up is likely to be much better," I said dryly. We had perhaps three meals' worth of freeze-dried emergency rations between the four of us, and ten pounds of ration bars. And a few blankets, but no tents. I hadn't expected we would need to camp out. 

"Some kind of noodle thing. I had Cloud pick. It smells okay, anyway. We're going to have to go into town again for some real supplies if we're going to be stuck out here for more than a day or two, though." 

"There's one more thing we need to do in this area," I said, beginning to walk over to where Strife was heating something over a camp stove. It did smell appetizing. "Once that's over, I'll call for an expedited pick-up if no one's shown up yet." 

It seemed to me that there was still one person missing, though. I turned to where Vincent was still sitting in the crotch of that tree, met his eyes, and gestured for him to join us. For a moment, he didn't seem inclined to move. Then he jumped down from his perch with an odd, weightless grace that once again proved that whatever had been done to him was different from the SOLDIER enhancements. Even I leave marks on the ground when I walk. 

Someone like Vincent would be a more useful model for an invincible fighter than the usual SOLDIER, really. If he had been locked in a coffin for the twenty-plus years that the lab had been abandoned, then he didn't really need to eat, which wasn't a small advantage. Hojo should have followed up on that. Perhaps the procedure had a low success rate, or wasn't cost-effective. 

There hadn't been anything in that lab about Vincent, I was fairly certain. I hadn't had time to read nearly everything, but the notes that had been left on-site all pertained to Project S. 

Me. 

That meant that Vincent's history was . . . somewhere else. Hojo had probably taken the files with him when he'd vacated the lab. Or destroyed them as no longer of value when he'd abandoned the experiment. 

Someone pushed a bowl of food into my hands. Zack, looking worried again. 

"I'm starting to think I should stampede some monsters through here to keep your mind off things. I mean, I know it's been a tough couple of days, but try to keep it together, okay?" 

I waved away his concern. "I'm fine." And started to eat, still standing, because sitting would have required me to remove Masamune from the harness that supported her. Beside me, Zack did the same, keeping his Buster Sword to hand. 

He did stop, though, to shove another bowl into Vincent's hands with a sharp, "You, too." Vincent looked at the bowl, then looked at Zack. Then at me. Finally, he shrugged and sat down on a rock to eat. 

When I'd scraped the bottom of the bowl, it was Strife who pressed a mug of coffee into my hands, with a shy, "Sir". I nodded to him and took a sip. 

"You are _not_ fine," Zack said quietly, willing to restart the discussion only now, after he'd gotten some food into me. 

"I'm . . . holding," I replied, just as quietly. "Assimilating the information properly will take time. Deciding what to do with it will take even longer. And the personal part of this isn't the important one, in any case. There's something larger and systemic going on inside Shinra, or perhaps 'using Shinra as a cover' would be a better way of putting it. And I intend to find out what it is."


	4. Chapter 4

**Cloud**

This far up in the mountains, this early in the morning, the thin air was cold enough to burn my throat, but I kept moving. Couldn't afford to fall behind. 

_The specimen housed at the reactor is able to attack my mind, and Major Fair's. Possibly those of others, if in close enough proximity. It may also be contributing to the monster outbreak. Which means that, in order to complete our mission, it needs to be destroyed. However, those of us most suited to the task can't afford to get anywhere near it._ And burning green eyes had settled on me, as though the General could see straight through my helmet. Me, the SOLDIER-wannabe-failure. 

Valentine was getting ahead of me again, and I sped up to a jog—this next little bit was downhill, so it was a good place to catch up. 

_What you need to do is simple: destroy the specimen behind the door at the back of the reactor, the one labeled JENOVA. I don't want anything left but ashes and light-motes, do you understand me, Strife?_

_Yes, sir!_

Zack had told me once that if I wasn't quite sure what the right thing to do was, I should just follow my orders and hope that the people above me in the chain of command had already figured things out. He'd also said that there was a difference between _thinking_ something might be wrong and _knowing_ that it was wrong, and that I needed to keep an eye on that. 

I wasn't sure why that had just popped into my head. I mean, everything General Sephiroth had ordered me to do had made sense, and none of it felt bad. It wasn't likely to hurt anyone except this specimen, and . . . maybe the General himself. Since there seemed to be some kind of connection between him and this Jenova-thing, whatever it was. 

_He doesn't ever admit when something's hurting him, Spiky. From what little he's said, I get the impression they . . . trained him not to. You only get that kind of pain tolerance by enduring a butt-load of pain first._

Aagh, what the hell was I thinking?! No matter how many times I'd heard Zack talk about him, I'd only met Sephiroth a couple of days ago, when I'd reported to the airstrip at the beginning of this mission. It wasn't my job to protect him. Especially not from himself. 

I hit the bottom of the slight downward incline and had to slow to a walk as the path started to climb again. There was no point in my doing this if I was too exhausted to finish it by the time I got to the top. 

A little further on, Vincent Valentine had stopped, and was waiting for me. 

"The path appears to end here," he observed. It was only the third thing he'd said to me. The first had been a request to borrow the cleaning kit for my rifle so that he could give his gun a good going-over, and the second had been when we'd started on this stupid trip: "Try to keep up." 

"This is where the bridge was," I explained, pointing to the last bits of wood and rope that were still dangling down on the far side. "We're going to have to climb up the back way. Just a sec." 

I tried not to think about how close that bridge had come to killing me _twice_. It had killed the other guy . . . oh, hell, I couldn't even remember his name. Or the driver's. The one that had died when that dragon had decided to open the front of our truck up like a can. Neither of them had been from my unit. Zack had used the fact that I was a local to request me specially for this mission. I'd barely talked to those two guys more than I'd talked to Valentine. But it still felt so wrong for me not to remember. 

I walked slowly along the edge of the cliff, comparing angles to fuzzy memories. Here? I crouched down and checked. Yes, here. 

"There are handholds," I said, lowering myself over the edge. "We have to go back down about forty feet. Then we follow the path up again, through a bunch of caves, until we hit the back exit from the grounds of the reactor." 

"I'll follow you down, then." 

I'd only done this a few times before, so I couldn't say that the strain on my arms as I moved from one carved grip to another was familiar, exactly. The way the wristlet I was wearing squeezed slightly every time I put my weight on my left arm certainly wasn't. 

All I'd had to say was, "I don't have any Fire materia—any materia at all, actually," and Sephiroth had been ordering Zack to lend me his equipment. Although they'd spent a little while swapping materia around like they were marbles, trying to put together the best selection for someone who didn't have much experience with using them and who was going to be in a dangerous place. 

Fire, All, Restore, Heal, Throw, Luck Plus. I hoped I didn't end up needing any of them for anything beyond the, uh, mission parameters I'd been presented with. 

I kicked away from the rockface and dropped the last couple of feet, then looked up to check on the guy who was supposed to be keeping me company for this. 

Vincent didn't climb like a normal person. Not at all. He dropped from hold to hold, using them to briefly arrest his fall. He was standing on the ground beside me only seconds after having started down. 

I was going to have to report that. If this crazy expedition ever straightened itself out for long enough for me to do anything as normal as giving a report. 

"The path kind of curls around, then into, the mountain," I said, starting to walk again. I was just too short, that was the problem. Five foot four, and that was with my boots on. So I was still growing. So what? I needed to be taller _now_. Sephiroth, Vincent, and Zack all kept leaving me behind accidentally, because I couldn't _walk_ fast enough. And sure enough, Vincent was getting out ahead again. 

He was out in front of me by about ten feet when I heard the sound of wings up above and instantly threw myself belly-down on the path so that the zu couldn't grab me. Usually if they can't get a good angle to grab you without touching the ground, they go away after awhile—oh, crap, Vincent didn't know that! 

I wriggled around, yanked my rifle free, and began to fire at the bird as it tipped, then folded, its wings, coming around for a dive at the man in the red cape. Vincent had drawn his gun, too, a pistol of a model Zack had identified as a Quicksilver. _Reliable, but older, and it's got one hell of a kick._

Vincent raised the gun, took aim calmly, and shot. The bullet went straight into the zu's eye, and my finger loosened on the trigger of my rifle as the bird screamed and fumbled its way higher into the air, crabbing a bit sideways as it flew away again, into the mountain mists. 

"It was a bad angle," said the man who had just demonstrated that insane feat of marksmanship. "Let's go." 

I scrambled to my feet, reflecting that this was going to have to go in my report, too. 

From there on, there were no more zu. Or any other monsters, for that matter. I got the feeling Vincent scared them. 

The reactor at the top of the mountain hadn't changed much, but why would it have, really? It had only been a couple of days. Still the same open catwalk leading to the door at the back. Still the same creepy pods inside, although they were empty now—I'd stood guard at the door while Zack had done that, turned each one off and run the creatures inside through until they dissolved into sparks of light. 

And there was the door with JENOVA written above it. Vincent wrenched it open as though it were his worst enemy, and went inside. I climbed the stairs at double-time to follow him in, as no one had dared do for Sephiroth yesterday. 

Tubes . . . and . . . a metal statue of a woman's head and upper body . . . What the hell was this? 

"Stasis equipment, and a mako feed. I think. To keep their specimen from decaying. Or getting loose." Vincent was examining one of the big canisters that stood half-sunk into the floor. "The actual stasis tube, which is what we need to clean out, must be behind that." He gestured at the statue-thing. 

He jumped onto the thickest of the tubes, the red one that rose from the center of the room at an angle. Somehow, he managed to stay balanced when he landed near the top. He leaned forward and examined the statue for a bit, then dug his claw into a seam that I couldn't see from the ground, and pried part of the metal away. Electricity spat from the inside, and Vincent yanked his claw back quickly, nearly falling off the tube. When the mini-lightning had quieted down again, he pulled a handful of wires out of the hole he'd made and tore them loose, then attacked the exterior again. 

He nearly fell again a second later, when the whole statue came loose, but Vincent grabbed onto it and managed to pivot it so that the hunk of metal slid past him and went on its way to the floor without taking him along. Redirection of momentum, like they'd been trying to teach me in hand-to-hand. 

Behind the metal mass, between the dangling wires that still sparked now and then as one uninsulated end brushed another, there was a clear-walled tube. And floating inside it was something that looked both more and less like a human being than those specimens outside had. The body was almost a woman's until you looked at it more closely and realized that the pulsing mass at the feet and the bits of flesh sticking out behind were actually _part_ of it . . . 

Vincent pulled out his gun and shot something off to the side. It must have been some kind of lock or latch, because the tube fell open and dumped its contents, liquid and unhuman figure both, on the floor at the end of the room. 

I swallowed and forced my feet into motion. I had to go back there. I was supposed to—Sephiroth had ordered me to—burn this thing to ash. 

But as I got closer to the motionless body on the floor, it stopped looking quite so frightening and started looking more . . . pathetic, I guess. One glowing red eye, open but unseeing. Silver hair, like Sephiroth's but thin. I'd thought at first that her hands were tied behind her back, but the truth was that her arms ended before reaching the wrist, and the elbow and shoulder joints were locked in place when I prodded one with my toe, although the other bits of her body flopped normally. Her jaw even fell open. Her upper back, the back of her neck . . . those were unrecognizable, strings of chewed meat leaking out of holes in the skin, part of the upper spine clearly missing. And . . . those had been wings, I guess. They were pretty much in the same shape. 

There was a lump of bone sticking out of her back near the hip. It wasn't some kind of injury, the flesh around it was healed, but it was also thickened and lumpy . . . was that a scar? 

_I don't think this is what she's really supposed to look like._ That was the thought that passed through my head. That bone wasn't supposed to be sticking out. The useless arms were stupid from a survival standpoint. Maybe some of the other bits weren't meant to be there either. 

I gritted my teeth. It would have to go in my report, but it didn't really matter here and now. This thing was dangerous. It had been floating in that tank, paralyzed and reduced to a specimen, for longer than I'd been alive. Even if it hadn't started out that way, it had to be bugfuck nuts by now, and it could control other people's minds even if the old damage was too much to allow it to move its own body. It had to be destroyed. 

Even if I felt a bit sorry for it. 

Vincent was beside me again. "I'm going to make sure the brain is destroyed first. Then we'll deal with whatever remains of the body, if it doesn't just evaporate on its own." He frowned. "Which I doubt it will. Nothing is ever that simple." 

I expected him to pull out his gun, but instead he bent down and stuck his thumbs—both of them, the good one and the claw—into Jenova's eyes. Jenova didn't flinch or try to close those eyes, which was as good as proving she'd never been aware of what was going on around her in any useful way. 

Vincent's gun had a couple of materia slots in the handle, and a bright green light flared from one of them as his eyes narrowed in concentration He drew his hands back a moment later as flames exploded from every opening in Jenova's head—eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and the highest-up of the several shredded holes in the back of her neck. 

So that was what he'd meant by destroying the brain. I don't think I could have done it. My stomach was already turning itself inside-out like I'd been locked into the back of a truck for a ten-hour drive. 

_You can throw up when you've finished the mission,_ I told myself as I watched Vincent stand up and take a couple of steps back. I raised my hand and pointed before he could do or say anything. 

I concentrated as hard as I could on the mastered Fire materia I was wearing on my wrist. Which immediately gave a pulse that dropped me to my knees as the room lit up around me. 

An arm like a steel bar wrapped itself around me, and I was pulled-dragged out the door. Vincent slammed it behind us before he let me down. 

"You forgot to deactivate the All," he said. "A common trainee mistake. Don't do it again." 

I winced, scowling at my boots. Great, I'd made an idiot of myself. _At least I didn't do it in front of General Sephiroth._

"We'll have to wait until it's burned out before we can check it and . . . make certain," Valentine added, sitting down beside me on the steps. "It shouldn't take more than ten minutes." 

And I needed the rest, anyway, because my feet really hurt. I wasn't used to this. Up the mountain, down the mountain—that I could handle, but not after walking for miles through the hills. Surrounded by a bunch of too-tall superhumans. I'd done a fair amount of marching while I was in Midgar, but that was mostly on a flat track with other short guys. 

Three months until the SOLDIER exams came 'round again. Maybe Sephiroth would put in a word for me this time. Otherwise I probably wouldn't make it. Again. I didn't even know why they'd failed me. Tossed out after the _physical_ , for crying out loud. 

Vincent was a quiet guy. He didn't say anything. Barely moved. Let me brood, in fact, until it was time to check the back room again. 

He had to kick the door pretty hard to get it to open, and what was on the other side . . . wasn't recognizable. Twisted metal and pieces of pipe all over the place. It looked like one of the floor-tanks had exploded, leaving a crater that dug through the floor and into the rock underneath. Other than that, there was a lot of char and ash. 

My feet felt like lead again, but I made myself follow Vincent all the way to the back of the room, and saw the charred bones crumble to nothing when he prodded one with his toe. 

"And that would seem to be the end of Jenova," Vincent said. "Although I never claimed to be a biologist, I can't see how any viable cells could have survived. Let's go." 

Down the mountain again, around the edge of the town, and into the foothills. I stared at Vincent's back the whole way, thinking fixedly about nothing. 

When we got back to the camp, late that afternoon, we found Zack sitting on the ground with his back to a rock and a grass stem in his mouth, staring up at the sky. If it hadn't been for the uniform and the huge sword propped against that same rock beside him, he would have looked like a total hayseed. 

Sephiroth had been polishing Masamune or something, the sword lying bare across his lap, but when we got a bit closer, he stood up and sheathed it, letting the tip rest on the ground beside his boot. 

Green mako eyes scanned my face, but all he said, in that cool, emotionless tone I was starting to think of as his officer voice, was, "Report." 

I snapped to attention. "Yes, sir. After departing the camp at oh-five-hundred hours . . ." 

It was a pretty long report for a mission that had only lasted about twelve hours. I didn't leave anything out—not even the parts about Vincent Valentine. Even though he was listening in. The way he snorted at one point suggested that he even found it funny. 

" . . . and then we arrived back here," I finished. And waited. 

"Thank you, Strife. At ease." 

At least I could sag a bit now. 

"Do his observations agree with yours?" General Sephiroth asked Vincent, still in his officer voice. 

"Substantially." 

"And your opinion of Trooper Strife's performance?" 

Vincent raised an eyebrow. "The only real mistake he made was with the materia, and I doubt he's ever been trained in their use. Other than that, he exhibited loyalty to his mission, and enough courage to take on a monster far out of his league." 

"Excellent, and thank you. Major Fair." 

Zack spat out the grass stem. "Yes, sir?" 

"Do you happen to know why Trooper Strife failed the SOLDIER examination? I don't believe I ever reviewed that part of his file." 

Wait, what was this? I held my breath, trying not to hope. Trying not to fear. I wasn't sure anymore which was the more appropriate reaction. 

"Height requirement, sir." 

A look of surprise skated across Sephiroth's face for half a second before he bottled it up again. "I'd forgotten that even existed." 

"Honestly, sir, so had I, until I saw his file. Why do we have one, anyway? I'd swear I've known Third Classes who were under five-six." 

"Lazard instituted it after the Wutai War. To reduce intake, I think—we had too many people wanting to sign up and not enough spots for them. In any case, waiving it shouldn't cause any problems. Strife." 

I stiffened to attention again. "Yes, sir." 

"You've performed admirably on a mission far above your level. I can't force you into SOLDIER, and if it's your preference, I can arrange a promotion for you inside your current company instead—" 

"No, sir!" _Oh, hell, I just interrupted him!_ Thankfully, though, Sephiroth was still staring me in the face instead of impaling me with Masamune. Ignoring my screw-up the way he sometimes did with Zack, I guess. "I would very much prefer to join SOLDIER, sir!" 

"You might end up eating those words, Spiky," Zack said from somewhere off to the side. Sephiroth and I both ignored him. 

"Very well, Strife. The paperwork will be cleared the moment we get back to Midgar. And . . ." 

"Yes, sir?" I said, very tentatively, when he didn't continue. 

"The time will come soon when I'm going to need men I can trust. I hope that group includes you. Dismissed." Turning away from me, Sephiroth reached behind himself to affix Masamune to his sword harness, then began to fish through his pockets as he walked toward the edge of camp. 

"Sir? Where are you going?" Zack called after him. 

Sephiroth paused just long enough to deliver three sentences. "I'm going to call for pickup again—the reception here is terrible. And then I'm going to find a few monsters. Otherwise, I may end up killing something I don't want dead."


	5. Chapter 5

**Vincent**

I followed him into the hills. Not the smartest thing to do, perhaps, and I wasn't sure myself why I hadn't just gone back to town, let myself into the mansion, and lain down in my coffin again. I had told him . . . not everything, perhaps, but the most essential. And although I hadn't yet seen him fight, I was certain he didn't need my protection. Not anymore. _And_ I had felt my beasts stir inside me during the shock of gaining a little more understanding of what Hojo had done to me, even though I'd thought I'd wrestled them into submission long ago. I might be a danger to everyone around me. 

And yet I could not force myself to retreat back into the darkness. Instead I shadowed Sephiroth as he wandered from hilltop to hilltop, fiddling with a small black box that had to be some kind of PHS, and muttering to himself. It was some twenty minutes before he stopped in place and stabbed at the front of the box several times with the tips of his fingers, then raised it to his ear. 

"Damn you, answer," he muttered. Then, louder, "Finally. Yes, it's me. We need a pick-up, and no one seems interested in sending anything our way. A monster trashed the engine, the cab, and the driver—believe me, it isn't going anywhere. We'll return to town tomorrow morning to make us easier to find. Just get it here! I've already lost two men. And I'm going to hang up before I run out of charge." 

" _Sephiroth, you—_ " They were the first words from whoever was on the other end of the connection that had been loud enough for me to make them out as more than a sort of buzz. Sephiroth cut them off with another fingertip stab and stuffed the PHS back in his pocket. Then he turned slowly through not quite forty degrees, until he was exactly facing me. 

"Was that truly so interesting to spy on?" Lucrecia's son asked me in a tone of mild interest. 

"Not especially. I'm surprised you knew I was there." I'd been ghosting from shadow to shadow, using, if not every trick I knew, then most of them. 

One pale brow rose. "You need a shower—you smell musty. Although if you've been in that cellar for twenty years, I suppose you're not used to dealing with adversaries who also have enhanced senses. What was your specialty among the Turks?" 

"Sniping," I told him flatly. 

"Assassination, in other words. I'm hoping we won't need that, but . . ." Sephiroth shook his head. "Why did they send an assassin to play guard in Nibelheim?" 

I shrugged. "I was never informed. I suppose they thought it would be a good place to hide me when I wasn't needed. Or perhaps they wanted to see if introducing me to Lucrecia would trigger something." I'd promised myself that I would hold nothing back from this man. It didn't matter if it was personal, or irrelevant to his problems. I owed him so very, very much. A little shame and a few secrets couldn't even begin to balance the scales, but they were what I had. 

"Explain." Sephiroth chose a different direction and began to walk, clearly expecting me to follow. 

"Lucrecia considered herself responsible for my father's death. She'd been one of his research assistants as a student, and was, in fact, present when he died." 

There was that eyebrow again. I wondered if he realized Hojo had the same method of deliberately telegraphing mild surprise. It was one of the few hints of the father that I'd seen in the son so far. "Your father was a scientist?" 

"An archaeologist, with a particular interest in Summon materia and their relevance to certain old legends. He worked with both Lucrecia and Hojo." Another delicate silken thread tying us together, but this one was black. 

"And did she? Kill him?" 

"I have no idea—I never cared to investigate. The report suggested that it was an accident for which she blamed herself, nothing more. If there was more to it . . ." I shrugged. 

"Your father's death meant nothing to you?" 

Ah. _Now_ I understood why he was so interested in this line of questioning. "My father and I were never close. I joined the Turks specifically to sabotage the expectations he had of me. From that point onward, we never spoke." 

_Yes, Sephiroth, it's possible for ordinary humans to hate their fathers._ Although Grimoire Valentine had never been quite so evil as to use me as the subject of an experiment, there had been no love lost between us, either. 

Then I noticed something, and asked a question of my own. "Why are we headed back towards Nibelheim?" 

"I'm going back to the mansion. I want another look at those documents." 

"The risk . . ." I said. Not quite arguing. 

Sephiroth shook his head. "The pressure from Jenova has vanished. Therefore, I assess the risk as low. Although that _is_ why I didn't tell Zack. It would have awoken his mother chocobo tendencies, and I can't afford to have him prioritize my safety over information at this point." A pause. "Did Hojo ever give you any indication of what he intended to do with a pet Cetra?" 

"No." Lucrecia's motivations, I knew, had been pure scientific curiosity, the desire to see if she could resurrect the race that she had heard so much about, but if Hojo had wanted something else—and I wouldn't have been surprised if he had—he'd kept it to himself. 

Sephiroth was frowning. "There's still a piece missing," he said. "I don't like that." Suddenly, he sped up, walk to jog to run to a full sprint. 

He might have been trying to shake me off, for all I knew, but I wasn't going to let him. Not if I could help it. I tried to match him, and was only a little surprised when I found that I could. 

I still wasn't entirely used to what my altered body could _do_. Hojo had performed some rudimentary tests on me—strength, speed, reflexes, visual and auditory senses—but not endurance. I hadn't known that I could run flat out for nearly half an hour without tiring. It wasn't something I could have tested while lying in a coffin. 

Sephiroth slowed when we reached the edge of town. I think his intention was to avoid the local population by circling around the outskirts, the way Cloud and I had done on the way to and from the reactor earlier that day, but we were . . . interrupted. 

She was shorter even than Cloud, and her clothes left more of her body bare than I felt was strictly required, but Sephiroth didn't seem to care, so perhaps fashions had shifted far enough to make her clothing acceptable since I'd last been part of the world. The fighting gloves she wore had seen some use, but I had the impression that had been more in practice than actual _fighting_. The only other thing I found notable about her was her eyes. They were much the same colour mine had been before I'd been subjected to Hojo's tender mercies: right on the cusp between brownish-red and reddish-brown. 

"Miss Lockheart." Sephiroth's voice had taken on the same detached tone as he'd used in assessing Cloud's report. "What are you doing here?" 

"The innkeeper's too scared to tell you that Major Zack didn't pay him," the girl said. 

"I see. I will take care of that, then." 

"And . . . I wanted to ask . . ." The girl traced a pattern in the dust with her toe. "There's this guy . . . he left Nibelheim more than a year ago to go join the Shinra forces . . . I know it's a long shot, but I wanted to know if you've run into him. His name is Cloud Strife." 

Sephiroth's eyebrow rose slightly. "The only 'Strife' that I'm aware of was recently promoted to SOLDIER Third Class. I was unaware he was a friend of yours, Miss Lockheart. If you wish to contact him, I would suggest writing to the central Shinra mail-drop in Midgar. Include his rank in the address." 

Technically, I noted, Sephiroth hadn't told a single lie, but he'd chosen very carefully which information he was going to give, and which to omit. It was a performance worthy of a Turk. 

"Thank you, General. I'll do that." The girl gave Sephiroth a radiant smile before running off. I think she waited until she thought she was out of earshot of us before saying to the world at large, "Congratulations, Cloud—you really did it! I guess it's my turn now." 

Sephiroth shook his head silently, and turned towards the inn. Inside, he paid the innkeeper twenty-four hundred gil without haggling (inflation, I suppose), and then left again. I repressed a sigh. General Sephiroth, it seemed, was what the Turks called _a difficult charge_ —a man who didn't telegraph his actions in advance and didn't accept advice. Tough to tail; worse to guard. And I was out of practice. Fortunately, I knew where he was heading. This time. 

From the outside, the mansion looked more run down than I had expected. The exterior paint was peeling, and a couple of the windows were broken. I was probably lucky that it hadn't collapsed and buried the stairwell leading to the lab and the vault during my long sleep. 

"Do you truly expect to find anything useful here?" I found myself asking. 

Sephiroth glanced at me over his shoulder as he opened the front gate. "No. But at the same time, the chance is unlikely to come again, so I intend to look. I can sleep on the way back to Midgar. We'll be spending at least eight hours in transit on the leg between here and Costa Del Sol." 

_We._ There were several things I wanted to say about that implicit assumption I would be coming with them. I settled on, "I'm not certain it's safe for me to return to Midgar." 

"If you're worried about being recognized—" 

"No, it's . . ." I did _not_ want to talk about this, but I forced myself to continue. "I have a Summon materia implanted in my body." Not true in the strictest sense, but it was the easiest way to explain. "Its power sometimes manifests itself uncontrollably." 

Lucrecia's son had turned to face me fully now. "Meaning?" 

"Under circumstances of injury or extreme stress, I transform into the creature the materia was meant to summon." It was probably better to leave out the complication of my other three co-walkers for the time being, but they were nothing more than a detail when it came to keeping me contained. Chaos was the dangerous one. "But I have no control over it once it manifests, and it is a powerful destructive force." 

"A summoned creature without a summoner, in effect," Sephiroth said, eyes narrowing slightly. "It clearly hasn't happened since Zack woke you, and you can't tell me that the past day hasn't been stressful." 

"I came close at one point." 

"But you were able to stop it from happening. I doubt you're a danger to Midgar . . . and if you are, I can handle you." 

"You seem very confident of that." 

"I've never been beaten since I reached full maturity." The words should have sounded arrogant, but coming from Sephiroth, they were more . . . matter-of-fact. "By monsters _or_ by men. And to be honest, if your summon decided to trash the interior of Shinra Tower . . . I might be more inclined to pitch in and help it than try to fight it to a standstill." 

He was angry. I could see that, but at the same time, the tells were very, very subtle. A slight tension in his shoulders. Head tilted at a different angle. Eyebrows not quite the same shape. This man was accustomed to bottling things up inside. It was a wonder that he hadn't gone off like a land mine when I had told him who his father was. And if he lost his control and everything _did_ explode out, he might well be more dangerous than Chaos. 

After all, I was a failed experiment who had been discarded two decades ago. He was the successful one, and Shinra had trained and honed him to a fine killing edge. 

"And if you intended to go and hide in that coffin again, Vincent Valentine," he was saying, "then I will simply pack it up with you still inside when the truck gets here tomorrow. As I implied to Strife earlier, I have far too few people around me that I can genuinely trust. In fact, at the time I arrived here, I would have said, just one." 

"Zack Fair," I filled in. 

Sephiroth nodded. "I don't even know why I trust you, or why I find it so easy to speak of such matters to you. Perhaps it's merely that I know you have nothing to gain by attacking or manipulating me. The people in this world of whom that could be said . . . are very few indeed." 

He turned away again, pushing through the gate to the mansion. Leaving me to follow once again. I was getting used to the sight of that black-clad back, the broad shoulders with the sword hilt poking up on one side, and the long, thick silver hair that somehow never got tangled or tarnished. He moved like a big cat, graceful and precise. 

He was as beautiful as his mother had been, but in a completely different way. I wondered if he knew . . . no, he was an adult, surely he had at least been propositioned by now, no matter how isolated Shinra had been keeping him. He might even have been married, although I doubted it. Hojo would never have allowed him that kind of emotional refuge, no matter how eager he was to breed an army of little Sephiroths to add to his experiment. 

This time, I noticed the musty smell of the mansion as we made our way through the abandoned rooms. I wrinkled my nose. If I really smelled like that, no wonder he had been able to detect me from more than ten feet away. 

The basement lab hadn't changed in the twenty-four hours I'd been outside either, although it felt like it had shrunk. Rather than going to the desk messily stacked with notebooks, Sephiroth went back to the shelves and walked along them slowly, pulling out a book here or there—the ones associated with streaks of disturbed dust. Looking for patterns in what had been changed. Thoughtfully, I started to do the same from the opposite end, although that was mostly reference volumes, rather than journals. 

If I hadn't been checking the shelves with so much care, I would probably have missed another anomaly. Tucked into an ill-lit corner on the bottommost shelf, next to a three-year collection of the _Journal of Cytology_ , was a small book with a leather binding and nothing written on the spine. I plucked it from its place and added it to the slowly growing pile in the crook of my left arm. 

I'd only pulled eight books by the time Sephiroth and I met near the midpoint of the shelves. He had nearly twenty. We pushed aside the other books on the desk to make room for the new piles and started reading. 

Most of the references that had been excised and replaced were about tests on Jenova. One book, which purported to have been written by Professor Gast but didn't match his handwriting very well when I pulled another journal to compare, seemed to have been replaced entirely, but it was impossible to tell what had been in the original. 

Another journal, one of Hojo's, had had several pages in the middle cut out and _not_ replaced. Sephiroth tried to recover some text from the last page by shading the first one after the gap with a pencil, something that rarely got us more than a couple of words given how light Hojo was on his pen, but this time one of the words was a name, and I was able, with some effort, to recall the man it had belonged to. 

"He was a lab technician who mishandled a broken test tube," I told Sephiroth. "In doing so, he stabbed himself in the hand with glass shards contaminated with Jenova's cells and liquid mako. At first it seemed that it hadn't had any effect on him, but about two weeks later he started acting severely paranoid and talking about hearing voices. Two weeks after that, he tried to hang himself in his room. His roommate found him in time, or maybe he was already too contaminated to die from mere asphyxiation. Three days after they cut him down, he sneaked into the room I was sharing with the other guard, stole Toby's pistol, and blew his own brains out. Some odd things showed up in the autopsy, but I don't know the details. Hojo was overjoyed, though, because it was the first indication they'd had that Jenova's cells were still viable. It turned out that they can't be cultured in a normal cell medium—you need blood _and_ mako before they'll start to multiply." 

"Jenova," Sephiroth murmured. "And he wasn't strong enough to withstand her voice." 

Lucrecia's son was, I reflected, as well-hardened as any Turk. He hadn't reacted at all when I'd described the long-dead lab technician's suicide attempts, except for a slight tilt of the head that suggested he was calculating bullet trajectories, or perhaps the amount of time it took for a normal human to asphyxiate after the airway was cut off. 

"What's this?" he was asking now, holding up the leather-bound volume. 

"I don't know. Possibly nothing, but it caught my eye." 

"Hmm." Sephiroth flipped it open . . . and stiffened, the most open expression of surprise I'd yet seen him display crossing his face. 

I moved around to stand behind him, and read the title-page over his shoulder: _Diary of Lucrecia Crescent_. 

Sephiroth suddenly shoved it into my hands. "Is it her handwriting?" he demanded. 

I flipped through it, checking each _2_ and the descender on each _y_ with particular care. "I think so, yes. The dust suggests it was undisturbed after this place was abandoned, and the subject matter . . ." I checked one date in particular, and winced as I saw my foolish, clumsy proposal of marriage laid out in front of me. ". . . is personal and contains details I wouldn't expect anyone else to know." 

I handed the book back to him, and he wordlessly closed it and slid it into a pocket of his coat, then pulled out his PHS for a moment. "Five-thirty," he said after glancing at it. "We need to leave if we're going to get back to the camp before Zack and Strife wake up. It would look odd for us to approach the pick-up in two separate groups, and I'd rather keep any additional oddity to a minimum until we get back to Midgar." 

"And how are you going to explain me? Or do you expect me to follow you on my own?" I would, I realized. If he wanted me to. Sephiroth represented both my redemption and my best chance of getting at Hojo to complete unfinished business, Turk-style. 

Lucrecia's son smiled his tiny smile, a bare quirk at the corners of his mouth. "I'm not anticipating a problem there. After all, there is one organization on this planet where another man with mako eyes will not be noticed in the least."


	6. Chapter 6

**Zack**

The Shinra base outside Costa del Sol was pretty damned tiny for something that was the main entry point for nearly the entire continent these days. Well, okay, it was mostly for guarding and maintaining the pocket mako plant and the private airstrip the company used, but still. _Cloud_ could have invaded the place and torn it apart. I knew exactly how many personnel they had, too: twenty rankers, four noncoms, and three officers, all from the regular army, plus a couple of SOLDIER Thirds who were supposed to handle any especially nasty monsters that showed up. 

Guys who screwed up badly tended to end up at dead-end postings like these. I'd come close to pulling one of those assignments a couple of times, and escaped only by the grace of an Angeal, if y'know what I mean. 

"General Sephiroth's party," I explained to the gate guard—not that he didn't know, since the truck I'd just gotten out of had come from this base, along with its driver, but there was a book, and we both had to follow it. "Consisting of the General, Major Zack Fair—that's me—Third Class Soldier Vincent Gunner, and Trooper Cloud Strife." 

_There are exactly three things you and Strife need to remember,_ Seph had told us as we waited at the pickup point. _One, I went inside the JENOVA room at the reactor alone and blew it up. You two never saw what was inside. Two, we never found the basement staircase at the Shinra Mansion, and so never got into the laboratory. Three, Vincent is a Third Class, surnamed Gunner, and he presented himself to us in Nibelheim while we were waiting for pickup. He debriefed himself to me privately, so you have no idea what he was doing there or why he was out of uniform. I'll take care of the records._

There wasn't much Cloud and I had been able to say to that except _Yes, sir_. At least it was obvious Seph had a plan for what to do next. Which was good, since all I had was a very silly backup plan that involved leaving Shinra and joining a Wutainese terrorist group. Never mind that I don't look Wutainese—that's why it was silly. 

Inside the perimeter, the base hadn't changed since we'd come through a week ago going the other way. There was a converted mansion that hosted the officers, Thirds, and any guests of higher rank, a barracks that housed the noncoms and the troopers, and a fair number of outbuildings of some kind or other. 

The driver of our truck pulled up in front of the mansion and the base commander came out to greet us, just like last week . . . except that this time, he knew enough to wait expectantly instead of offer the General a chance to rest in the guest quarters until dinner. Seph didn't do rest much that I'd ever seen, and the base commander had been taught that pretty quick. The poor bastard glanced quizzically at Vincent, but didn't ask about him, either. 

"I need a terminal to file my report," Seph told the man. "Fair, Gunner, you two get yourselves cleaned up. And back into uniform," he added with a sharp glance at Vincent, who didn't seem disturbed by it. "Fair, Strife is your problem until we leave. Dismissed." 

"Yes, sir." Cloud and I were used to saying it with the same timing, but I was a little surprised when Vincent managed to join in on the chorus, and salute only a little sloppily. 

"Okay," I said, turning to the other two. "Vincent, I'll show you where the showers are. They'll probably put you in the room beside the one I was using when we came here on the way up." SOLDIER Thirds didn't sleep in regular army barracks. "Cloud, you go draw a set of uniforms and boots for our friend—size thirty-six on the uniforms, I think, and . . . hey, Vincent, what's your shoe size?" 

"Ten," was the terse reply. 

"Right," I said. "Bring 'em to the shared bathroom here, and then go have your own shower and rack out until we leave tomorrow." 

"Yes, sir." Cloud ran off, although he didn't get very far before he had to collar one of the local troopers and ask for directions. It made me smile, because it was one of the things I liked about Cloud: he was determined and resourceful and got things done. 

Vincent was still waiting beside me, silent and expressionless. I still wasn't sure what to make of him, but I figured anyone who could help with Seph-wrangling was a good friend to have. 

"This place isn't big enough to give everyone a room with its own bath," I told him, letting us into the converted mansion (that didn't look anything like the creepy one in Nibelheim and didn't even _have_ a basement, thankfully). "Seph and the base commandant get the two rooms with ensuites, so the rest of us have to share." 

They'd put the big bathroom on the ground floor, not too far from the entrance. Again, I was the one who opened the door, and Vincent looked around inside with his usual poker face on. I couldn't tell whether or not he was bothered that there were just four shower heads lined up in a row with no stalls, but he wasn't moving forward to take off his clothes. Well, he was a grown-up—he could figure it out for himself. I checked my duffel to make sure I did still have one good change left, then shucked off the harness for the Buster Sword and put it aside so I could take my shirt off. 

I stripped out of everything quickly and stuffed it inside the laundry bag that was now taking up most of the space inside my kit, grabbed my soap and shampoo (unscented, SOLDIER standard issue), then went to turn on the nearest shower. 

By the time Vincent stepped up beside me several minutes later, my hair was dripping messily into my eyes, but I gave him a quick, sidelong glance (you can't look straight on, or for very long, if you don't want the other guy to think you're checking out his junk), and whistled soundlessly, because man, that guy was a _mess_. 

The claw was one thing. I was almost used to that, although I hadn't expected him to wear it into the shower. Maybe it didn't come off. The rest of him was . . . skinny. Long, ropy muscles, not built up like me or Seph, and they just barely covered his ribs well enough that I couldn't see them. He needed at least a couple of months of good food. Without the weird headband, his hair went to around the middle of his back. 

But it was the scars I really noticed. Most SOLDIERs don't have many—we heal fast, and completely. Only scars we had before entering the program stay around. I have the odd one from stupid crap I did when I was a kid. Vincent had . . . a lot more. _Big_ ropy one in front, over his heart, with some narrow straight lines and what looked like an autopsy Y-shape crossing it. Shallow crater below his left shoulderblade that might have been a bullet exit wound from the mess up front. Marks on his left upper arm above the claw. Shackle scars on both ankles. And those were just the ones I could see at a glance. I was willing to bet there were a lot more that had faded until you would have to look carefully to make them out. 

For all that, he wasn't a bad-looking guy. Hey, give me a break—I prefer girls when I can get them, but part of the thing with being a SOLDIER on active duty is that you _can't_ always get them, and I'm a guy. We get horny. Well, if we're not named "Sephiroth" we do. Anyway, I'm not above trading hand-jobs, or even blow jobs, if that's all I can get. Not that I could see doing _that_ with Vincent. His aura wasn't nearly as scary as Seph's, but it was . . . weird. 

"Hey," I said, and he gave me a quick glance. "You'll need this," I said, quickly squeezing enough out of the shampoo bottle for myself and handing it to him. 

"Thank you." 

I thought I heard a muffled curse a bit after that. Must have gotten soap in his eyes. I know what that's like—my hair's almost as bad as Cloud's when it comes to having a mind of its own. 

Vincent rinsed off quickly, then turned off his showerhead and went looked for a towel. I grinned when I saw there were two nice thick fluffy ones laid out for us, beside a stack of Third-Class-coloured uniform fabric. I was going to have to see if I could convince Seph to give Cloud a bonus. The communal towels in a place like this were always grungy as hell. The ones they'd had when we'd passed through on the way down had looked like they were going to crawl off into a corner to breed and make little facecloths. 

If Vincent was aware of that, he didn't give any sign, just dried off and started examining the piled uniform. Issue boxers went on first, then the loose trousers and turtleneck sleeveless shirt. Cloud had included the boots and belt that went with the set, but not the gloves, the helmet, the sword harness, or the armour—there might not be any spares stored here, anyway. Vincent put his old right-hand glove back on, leaving his claw bare, strapped on his gun, and finished by tearing a thin strip off his old headband to tie his hair back. Then he shifted a couple of clips of bullets into the pockets of his new clothes, rolled his old clothes into a bundle inside his cape, and stood up. 

Damned if he didn't look almost normal like that. I knew a couple of other Thirds who were almost that skinny . . . no, _lean_ was probably the word . . . and without his collar and all that hair in the way, Vincent had a handsome, sharp-featured face. He was probably going to find himself with a fanclub the moment he showed up in Midgar. Hey, even I have one. So it isn't that big—that's hardly my fault! 

I'd just turned off the shower and started to get my hair dry when he left the bathroom. I had to force myself not to run after him. The man didn't know the first thing about behaving like a SOLDIER—the branch hadn't even existed when he went into that coffin. If he blew his cover, Seph was going to have my head, but running after him naked wasn't going to help. Vince was a smart guy. Hopefully, he'd be smart enough to make as little contact as possible with the other people at the base. 

Clean, dry, and in a fresh uniform, I went and threw my bag full of laundry into the room I was pretty sure they'd give me again, got a bull's-eye in the middle of the bed (not that I'd ever had any doubt I would), and went out to wander around the public areas of the base, 'cause I had nothing better to do. 

The thing that caught my attention first was a weird swishing sound. Not that those kinds of noises usually point to anything being a _problem_ , but it was out of place. So I went to have a look . . . and found Cloud behind one of the buildings, swinging a long stick like a practice sword. 

I'd shown him the basics when I first met him, a few months ago, after he'd failed the SOLDIER exam. He'd been brooding about that over and over, no matter _how_ many times I told him that almost no one passed before they'd gotten something close to their full growth, which he pretty clearly didn't have yet. But I'd figured that teaching him the first couple of things that Angeal had taught me about handling a sword would take his mind off it . . . and it looked like it had. There was no way he would have gotten all the moves that smooth and fast and connected if he hadn't been practicing them over and over again. Well, except when he tried an imitation of Sephiroth's high guard-ready position. That was completely unsuited to the rest of the style I'd been teaching him . . . and completely unsuited to Cloud, really. It worked for Seph because he was tall enough that he was almost always striking _downward_ to attack when dealing with a human enemy. 

"Don't try that one until you understand why Seph favours it," was all I said, though. "Trying to get a head start on the whole SOLDIER thing?" 

"Zack! I . . . uh, yeah . . . I still can't believe _Sephiroth_ , of all people, said he was going to bend the rules for _me_." The wide blue eyes and chocobo hair made Cloud look even younger than he was as he lowered his stick-sword. 

"Do you understand why, though?" I was going to have to rip away a couple more layers of his innocence, and I wasn't very happy about it, but there was no backing out of the situation we were in. 

But Cloud managed to surprise me. "I think so. Some, anyway. That thing he said about men he could trust—he's going up against someone else inside Shinra, isn't he? And I already know too much, because I heard some of what Vincent said—even if I don't really understand it—and because I helped take out that Jenova thing. He's promoting me because I'll owe him one, that way." 

"Something like that, yeah." 

"Do you think there's going to be another war?" Cloud asked in a small voice. 

I forced myself to laugh. "Between Seph and the Science Department? It wouldn't be much of a war. If it took him half an hour to clean them all out, it would only be because those floors are riddled with little rooms and he'd have to kick all the doors down one at a time. The problem would be, well, _after_. I'm not sure what the President would do if his prize SOLDIER General started taking out the other employees." That Seph could slaughter the President in the same way he could the Science Department went without saying, but I wasn't sure he _would_. He'd never given a damn that I could see about Shinra as a cause, but, well, he'd grown up there. For him, as far as I could tell, Shinra was part of the natural order of things, always existing and never questioned. Like the ground or the sky. "But I don't think Seph is going to start a war. Not yet. He's too smart for that." 

"Oh." Cloud seemed to be thinking hard. "Zack, can you tell him . . ." 

"What?" I asked, when he'd been quiet a bit too long. 

" . . . That he _can_ trust me." 

I ruffled his hair, and Cloud scowled and wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I'll tell him." But I was willing to bet that Seph already knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I do appreciate the comments you guys are leaving, even if I often don't respond. Glad you're enjoying the story!


	7. Chapter 7

**Sephiroth**

I had never realized how _noisy_ it had been inside my head until Jenova died and left me in sudden silence. She'd always been there before, at some level, without my realizing it. Whispering below the level of hearing. Pushing at me internally, although with little force until that day at the reactor in Nibelheim. 

I'd known the moment she had died, because everything had gone quiet. It had created an absence in me that I was still getting used to . . . but even a hole in my head would have been better than the constant fierce pressure she'd been hitting me with towards the end. If Zack and Vincent hadn't combined to get my attention and haul me out of Nibelheim, I had the disturbing feeling I would have succumbed and become Jenova's puppet, doing whatever she asked of me in return for a scrap of warmth. 

Now I only had the aftermath of my pseudo-matricide to face. 

"Gil for your thoughts?" Zack said from where he stood at my right. 

"I was merely wondering how many hours I've spent thinking heavy thoughts in this particular elevator," I tossed back. 

"Too many. Hell, I'm not sure I've accumulated a full hour yet, and that's _already_ too long." He forced a smile, but I could tell he was forcing it. 

The elevator chose that moment to stop and open its doors. The room beyond could have been the reception desk for any other department, except for the familiar, hated smell of mako, disinfectants and formaldehyde that had permeated the first twelve years of my life. And, of course, the person waiting there. 

Hojo's appearance hadn't improved in my absence, and the thought that this man was my _father_ was enough to make my stomach turn over in sheer revolt. Stooped posture, greasy ponytail, wrinkled shirt . . . but, for once, not an incurably smug expression. Instead, he was angry. And . . . worried about something? 

I stepped out of the elevator, refusing to let him reduce me back to a child with a mere glare, as he'd once been able to do all too easily. Instead, I considered the most practical way of turning him into a smear on the greyish industrial berber carpet, whose splotchy pattern had always reminded me of spattered brains. This time, it would have been almost too easy, because I'd come here with Masamune on my back, something I had never done before. 

"You're late," was all Hojo said. 

"So was our ride back." Let him chew on that. Especially since I thought he might have had a hand in it. 

"Well, then, don't just stand there. Send the stray puppy back downstairs and come inside." 

"Major Fair is staying with me," I said flatly. "Just to make certain you don't drug me, restrain me, and vivisect me to determine why I didn't perform according to your expectations _this_ time." 

There had been a time, when I was very small, when I had desired praise from this man. I think I might have been as old as seven before I'd finally understood that I would never receive any, no matter how hard I pushed myself to surpass mortal limits. 

I kept my gaze trained at Hojo, but in my peripheral vision I could see Zack and the receptionist, both gaping. Perhaps I hadn't briefed Fair quite well enough. 

"I did find one very interesting thing in Nibelheim, you see," I continued. "Although I'm quite certain that it wasn't what you _expected_ me to find." 

From my pocket, I pulled a smallish, leather-bound book. Opening it to the first page, I thrust it in Hojo's face so that he could read the looping, graceful handwriting: _Diary of Lucrecia Crescent_. 

And for once in my life, I had the satisfaction of seeing Hojo go absolutely white. 

" _Where_ did you find this?" 

"It was on top of a wardrobe in one of the upstairs bedrooms," I lied, keeping my face expressionless. Letting it sink in that _years_ of attempts to prime me as Jenova's pawn had gone to waste. 

"We cleaned up the mess your department left behind at the reactor there, too," Zack chimed in, and sheer horror flashed across Hojo's face. 

"You—you can't have—That was a priceless specimen! Priceless! What have you done?!" 

_Destroyed everything that ever had meaning to you, I hope._ I couldn't let the words pass my lips, but they felt exceptionally satisfying inside my head. 

"Suppressing the outbreak of monsters around Nibelheim was part of our orders," I said instead. "They were clearly coming from the reactor, so cleaning it out was a necessary part of completing the mission. Perhaps next time you should think a little more carefully about what you have the president force on me, if you insist on continuing to play games." 

The series of shocks, coming one after the other, appeared to have rendered Hojo wholly inarticulate. Also a first, but it meant that I could continue to talk without having to do so _over_ him, which was . . . useful. 

"I'll allow your department to do the usual examinations, sample-taking, and booster shots, but nothing more, and Major Fair will be with me at all times." I wasn't ready to destroy this man. Not yet. Not while there was information I still didn't have. "He will most likely be accompanying me on all future visits to this level as well—and if not him, some other SOLDIER under my command." _That's right, Hojo. From now on, everything you do to me is going to be seen by at least one witness who is_ not _beholden to you._ I still wanted him dead, but there would be time enough for that when I was certain he would be of no further use to me. 

Cold-blooded calculation. Exactly how he had trained me. I allowed myself to smile, as much as I ever did. 

"That remains to be seen," Hojo said waspishly, "but I'll tolerate him this time. Carla! _Carla!_ " 

A few moments later, a young woman stepped through the door leading to the labs proper. Pinched face, short, dark hair, no makeup, clipboard. She wore grey trousers and a plain white dress shirt under her lab coat. Judging from the colour code on her security badge, she was a lab technician, not a junior researcher, and I did vaguely remember seeing her on other recent visits to the Hell Department. 

"General Sephiroth is here for his checkup and booster shots," Hojo said, voice still sour. "I am rather pressed for time, since the President wants me to _justify_ my latest use of his funds in writing—as though science needs to be justified! In the interest of dealing with that as quickly as possible, I'll have you do the General's checkup. You know the protocol?" 

"Yes, Doctor Hojo." 

"Then I'll leave you to it." Hojo scuttled off like the roach he was, disappearing through another door that I knew led to his private office. Off to formulate a plan to deal with a specimen that had suddenly developed a mind of its own, no doubt. One that he couldn't just lock in a coffin in an abandoned building and forget. I was too much in the public eye to just disappear, with my face on all those recruiting posters. It was one of the reasons I'd dared to lay down even such mild ultimata. 

Carla held the door to the labs open and gestured us through. Well, gestured me through, but I'd warned Zack, and he stuck to me like a mako-enhanced limpet, catching the edge of the door in a gloved hand as it tried to close in his face. 

She picked Room Three, gestured me to the familiar metal exam table, and then consulted her clipboard. 

"I don't believe I have to explain the routine to you, General," she said, ignoring Zack, who had found himself a space next to the closed door to stand in and glower. 

"You do not," I said in my chilliest tone of voice, and unclipped Masamune from her harness. I crossed the room to place her in Zack's hands. I wasn't about to let her rest on any surface in here—Bahamut only knew what Hojo might have coated it with. 

Systematically, I removed my sword harness, and my pauldrons. I always felt a bit vulnerable without the armour, ever since a Wutai soldier had driven his katana through my left shoulder from behind during the war. With my dominant arm crippled, I'd come very close to dying that day—I heal quickly, but not instantaneously, and it had been a severe wound. 

The coat was next, and I folded it precisely before placing it on the surface of the exam table beside everything else. Then the materia wristlet. And the gloves. Zack blinked as I started to take them off, since I'd never done so before in his presence, and then frankly stared as my hands were revealed to him. Well, it was one hand, really. The right one. 

Silently, now naked to the waist, I sat down on the exam table. Silently held out my hand. Carla was just as quiet as she scanned the bar code imprinted on the back of it, below the specimen accession number. I understood that Hojo's more recent human subjects just had a number, not the equivalent of one of the tags they put on the equipment, but I was denied that privilege. 

The scanner beeped. Zack looked at it as though it had turned into a Midgar Zolom, then looked at me. He wanted to say something, that was clear. I gave him a warning glare. _Remember your orders, Fair. Not while there's anyone else in the room._ That wouldn't keep Hojo from listening in on us, of course—he hadn't even bothered to have them hide the camera above the door—but Hojo already had a low opinion of Zack. 

As Carla had said, I knew the routine, knew where each needle was to be inserted and each device attached, and I went along with it without speaking or altering the expression on my face, offering or withdrawing limbs as required, and holding my hair out of the way for the spinal biopsy. Zack, in the meanwhile, was looking sicker and sicker. 

The "booster shots" consisted of three injections, none of whose contents I knew, and an IV bag of mako solution that I knew from experience took roughly half an hour to empty. Carla left the room after she sank the needle for that last into my arm, finally leaving me alone with Zack, who went over to inspect the IV stand the moment the door was closed behind her. 

He prodded the bag with a fingertip. "This is . . . How much is even _in_ here? They give you this _every time_? Sir," he added belatedly. 

"About once a month," I said with a shrug. The veins around the IV site were beginning to burn, but I welcomed the pain, because it meant that I'd soon be out of here. 

"Once a _month_?! That's crazy! I get two _ordinary_ shots—one fifty percent mako, one something-else-they-won't-talk-about—twice a _year_. The only time they ever hooked me up to an IV was the first couple of times I got mako as a new Third, and that was because they'd diluted it to the point it barely glowed, so that my body could get used to the idea. This . . . it's got to be almost _pure_. You should be hopelessly crazy with mako poisoning. And writhing in pain right now. Sir." 

"My physiology is different. My body sheds whatever it doesn't need." I wasn't about to tell Zack the details—about having neon urine for several days after a treatment, and my hair turning greenish at the roots sometimes. Or about the humiliating tests I'd been through when I was younger, when Hojo had wanted to assure himself that I really was absorbing part of what was in those damnable bags. 

Truth be told, I hadn't even known that the amount of mako I was being given was considered that abnormal. Genesis and Angeal's doses had been about half mine, and until now they'd been my only basis for comparison. I'd assumed I was getting perhaps ten times a standard SOLDIER dose, but if Zack was telling the truth, he was getting at most fifty cubic centimetres of pure mako a year, which made my dose in excess of two hundred times greater than his. 

And the other injections . . . the most frustrating part was that I didn't know if I really _needed_ any of them, or what they were for. There was a slim possibility that without the monitoring and constant treatments, my body would start deteriorating the same way Genesis' had. Until I found out, I couldn't afford to burn all my bridges with Shinra. Fortunately, I did have some tiny amount of control over Hojo, in that the man wanted to continue monitoring me. Getting more data on his favourite _creation_. And even if the treatments _were_ essential, I'd just bought myself a month by not giving Hojo time to prepare anything new. None of the syringes Carla had approached me with had looked or smelled unusual. 

"Just because it doesn't poison you doesn't mean it doesn't _hurt_ , Seph. You don't have to do that straight-spined perfect SOLDIER thing with only me here." 

"Do you really think Hojo would ever waste anesthetic on his research subjects?" I wondered if Zack understood why I sometimes asked questions like that: laced with sarcasm, but really intended as a reality check of sorts. I knew all too well that, as with the mako dosages, I had no idea what was considered "normal" when interacting with a scientist or physician. Hojo had _followed_ me to the base camp in Wutai to make certain I would never receive more than emergency treatment from anyone outside his control. 

"I . . . ugh . . . are you _serious_? Scratch that. But _please_ tell me that bit about cutting you apart, back in the lobby, was a joke." 

When I remained silent, Zack went from looking merely nauseous and pained to looking . . . as though he were going to burst into tears. 

"I definitely didn't brief you well enough," I finally said. Perhaps I should have taken him aside before we'd left Nibelheim and told him in detail about the marathon three-day session of surgery-torture that had immediately preceded Hojo's release of me to military Basic Training. That would have given him a chance to get the nausea and hysterics out of his system. 

The mako burn had gone all the way down to my fingertips and up to my shoulder now, and started oozing its way across my chest and up my neck, each individual cell in my body responding to the influx of energy with a pinprick of pain before settling in to absorb. I wondered if it was only the human cells that hurt, since Jenova's cells seemed to need the mako to thrive and divide. 

Although I'd now proven to my own satisfaction that I'd come from two parents who were at least nominally human, I wasn't sure how human that made _me_ , after everything that had been done to my flesh. I wasn't sure how human I _wanted_ to be. What I'd seen of the fragility of ordinary humans had never impressed me. I _enjoyed_ my strength, my superior fighting ability. The knowledge that, in this one thing, I truly was the best. What I didn't enjoy was the treatment I'd received because of it, and if I had anything to say about it, the worst of that was going to come to an end soon. 

I sat there patiently until the last drop of mako trickled down the tube, outlining my veins in sickly green light, then yanked the needle out. The hole closed immediately, just as all the other little wounds inflicted on me here had. Carla hadn't come back, but I had no doubt someone was watching us through the camera to make sure I finished the IV. 

I reassembled my clothing, armour, and weapons in an order that reversed the one in which I'd taken them off. With Masamune once more in place on my back, I went to the door. 

Locked. 

Looking up at the camera, I sneered and drew Masamune. The steel of the door might as well have been made of tofu for all the barrier it presented to her edge. 

"Don't try that again," I told the watchers. The mako burn was fading as I strolled through the doorway, with Zack once more on my heels. 

I'd bought myself a month in which to drag everything out into the light. 

Hopefully, that would be enough.


	8. Chapter 8

**Cloud**

" _Ugh._ " I snapped back to consciousness with a really bad taste in my mouth, not sure of where I was. The surface I was lying on wasn't my bunk, or an infirmary cot (not that there was much difference between the two—they even drew them from the same supply rooms, I'd discovered when detailed to help fetch mattresses). It felt like wood, and the light was weird. Opening my eyes showed me a really high ceiling somewhere far away. This place smelled of damp and rot and . . . flowers? 

"Hey, Spiky, good to see you awake! Do you know who I am this time?" A head popped into my field of vision. 

I groaned. "Go away, Zack." 

"Well, that's better than the last time," Zack said. "It isn't unusual for new SOLDIERs to hallucinate after the first mako treatments, but with you saying all that crap about Nibelheim burning down and Rufus Shinra being a were-chocobo, I figured I'd better keep you with me instead of taking you back to your spiffy new bunk to sleep it off. How do you feel, other than that?" 

"Like someone twisted my head off and put it back on backwards, then decided they preferred it the first way around after all," I said, trying to think. For a moment, all I could pull up was the nightmare about Nibelheim in flames. Then a moment later, the pieces all locked together. _Nibelheim—Sephiroth—Jenova—oh, shit._ And the promotion, and the enhancement therapy that went with it. Zack escorting me to Medical, because apparently Sephiroth had _ordered_ him to stick with me for some reason, even if it meant looking at my skinny butt draped in a hospital gown. Then tests and shots and getting strapped to a table and I must have passed out during that part. It was a good thing Zack had been there. "Did I really say Rufus Shinra was a were-chocobo?" 

"Yeah, complete with sound effects. You _wark_ pretty well." 

"Oh, hell," I said as someone giggled. Not Zack, thankfully. "Um, is there someone else here? For that matter, where are we?" Little pinpricks of pain fired through my body as I sat up. 

"I'm sorry. Zack said I should stay back until he was sure you were . . . all there." 

A girl. A real live girl who wasn't a trooper herself. Or Tifa, who I'd seen in Nibelheim, but hadn't talked to. Because at the time, I'd been convinced I was a failure. Now, I was just . . . confused. About everything. 

I could think about that later, though. The girl was slender, with light brown hair in a long braid, and the second greenest eyes I'd ever seen after General Sephiroth's. Which meant she matched a description. 

"You're Aerith, aren't you? Zack talks about you a lot. So I guess this is . . . your church?" And I was lying on some kind of bench near the back. "Zack, why are we in the slums?" 

"Um." Zack rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "I'd kind of promised Aerith I'd come down here today. Before Seph told me to babysit you through Medical, not that I blame him after the crap I saw the Science Department do to him this morning. So when I decided not to put you to bed, I figured I'd bring you with me. So that I could _prove_ I wasn't lying about there being a problem with our date." 

The whole thing was very Zack: following the letter of his orders, and nothing had actually gone _wrong_ , but it made normal people like me who were trying not to get into trouble feel . . . itchy. 

Then I had a terrible thought. _Oh, hell . . ._ "Please tell me you didn't carry me all the way here." 

"Nah, you were awake, just . . . not really tracking properly, if y'know what I mean. You got on and off the train okay, with me pulling you along. I only had to carry you for the last little bit, and I don't think anyone except Aerith saw us." 

I hoped not. I really hoped not. Or I was going to have my helmet glued permanently to my head, so that no one could ever identify me again unless I told them who I was. 

I tried putting my feet on the ground. The more I moved, the weirder I seemed to feel. Off-balance, and there was that hot, painful prickling, and I felt too light, like someone had tied a bunch of helium balloons to me. Side effects from the SOLDIER enhancement that would go away on their own as my body adjusted, I hoped. But I managed to stand up without swaying. Much. 

"I should get back to barracks," I said. "I didn't mean to interrupt your date." 

"Whoa, there, Spiky," Zack said, and I suddenly wanted to yell into his face _not_ to call me by that stupid nickname. No matter how much he thought my hair looked like a chocobo's . . . tail. "You are in _no_ condition to be wandering around alone. Just in case you have another attack and decide you can fly this time, and then jump off the edge of the Plate." 

"I've been wanting to meet you, anyway," Aerith said, with a gentle smile. "Zack talks about you more than anyone except Angeal Hewley and General Sephiroth." 

"On your dates?" Even inept-virgin-never-dated-anyone-ever Cloud knew that you were supposed to make the girl think you were focused on her when you went out on a date. Even if you weren't. 

"Only because she asks me to," Zack said, and Aerith nodded. 

"I can't make a commitment with someone without knowing where they come from," she said. "And I'd like to think that Zack and I are serious. So that means that we do talk about his job and his friends sometimes—and about my job and my friends. I suppose it doesn't seem very romantic," she added, with a laugh. "But it's something that couples need to do if they're going to stay together." 

I hoped I'd have a chance to use that advice someday. 

"Anyway," Zack said, "I figured we'd celebrate your promotion tonight, even if it isn't really a promotion." 

"I still don't understand how that works," Aerith said. 

Zack shrugged. "There's nothing much _to_ understand. SOLDIER has ranks and classes, and they're completely separate. Classes represent how well you can fight. Ranks represent how well you can _lead_. So if you've got a First Class with no rank, and a Third Class with a rank of Captain, then the Third Class is in charge and he can order the First Class around, but the First Class can take on much more powerful monsters. Right now, Cloud is considered a Third Class SOLDIER, but he's not an officer or anything. That means he can't give orders to anyone, but he's assigned to a SOLDIER unit rather than a regular one, and he's addressed as 'Soldier Strife' and not 'Trooper Strife' or 'Private Strife'." 

Aerith shook her head slightly. "So if you have three normal troopers and a SOLDIER . . ." 

"The SOLDIER's in charge, sort of," I said. That part was more complicated—an unranked SOLDIER was equivalent to a sergeant in the regular army, except not exactly. 

" _So,_ " Zack continued, going back to his original topic, "There's this bar down by the Wall Market. They don't card anyone in uniform, or anyone who's with anyone in uniform." So it wouldn't matter that I was just sixteen, right. "Sound good?" 

"I'm not sure being drunk on top of a mako hangover is a good idea, Zack," I said. That was what the SOLDIERs called it, or at least that was what I'd heard. 

Zack grinned. "That's the best part, in a way—it's hard to get drunk when you're enhanced, and you can't get an alcohol hangover that lasts more than maybe ten minutes." 

"So I'd still have the mako hangover," I pointed out. 

"Yeah, but you're going to have that anyway, so come on!" 

I shook my head. There was just no fighting it: Hurricane Zack was passing through the slums of Midgar, and would sweep whatever it found ahead of it. 

Zack was wrong. I _did_ get drunk. Never for very long, but it happened over and over again—I probably didn't have enough mako in me yet. Aerith was more sensible. She stuck to lemonade. 

I think it was the drinks that messed up my memory of what we were talking about. I kind of remember Zack teasing me about Tifa, and me getting all red and a little too loud about her being the daughter of the _town mayor_ and I wasn't allowed to touch her, and Aerith laughing because I was fighting Zack's teasing so hard that it almost made it look like Zack was right. Everything else about the bar is mostly gone, though, except for one thing. 

Once, when Aerith disappeared into the washroom, I asked him about the part of today he'd spent with Sephiroth, but all I'd gotten was, "Later, Spiky. For now, let's just say that's part of the reason I want to get drunk for a bit, 'kay?" 

"Later" ended up being around two in the morning. We'd seen Aerith home after last call at the bar and were waiting by the train station, because this late, there was only one train an hour between the slums and the Plate. It was dark and hot and it stank ten times worse than I ever remembered this part of the slums stinking before. I wrinkled my nose and stared along the tracks, willing the train to get there faster. 

"There are a couple of ways that enhancement sucks," Zack said quietly. "Smelling everything is one of them. I mean, you can use the information sometimes, but mostly it's just . . . ugh. And it's one of the first abilities that settles in." 

"Great," I said, and searched for a distraction. "Zack, about the General . . ." 

"About today, you mean? I don't even know where to start, but it was bad. Worse than I thought, even. Worse than Angeal ever told me, even though he was the one who asked me to look after Seph in the first place. Did you know Seph has a fucking _bar code_ printed on the back of his hand? Like they think he's a piece of machinery. And it isn't some kind of weird personal style thing. They fucking _scanned_ it. That's why he never takes his gloves off where anyone can see." 

I swallowed, because all of a sudden, I felt like an Ice materia was going berserk in my stomach. I knew Zack wasn't joking this time, because he never used that kind of language for a joke, and he was looking like someone had killed his puppy and he was going to make them _pay_. 

"Seph glaring at me was the only thing that kept me from freaking out over and over again. The bar code. All the samples they took from him—I've only had to do that spinal fluid thing once, and it _hurts_ , and he didn't even twitch. Or when they took a cube of meat nearly an inch to a side out of his arm. Okay, so it healed up in seconds, but there's no way you're going to tell me that was pain-free. And then they finished up by hitting him with enough mako to poison the whole city. And the whole thing was just _normal_ for him, and I would have freaked out right away when he said that stuff about surgery without anesthetics except that I didn't think he was serious . . . Sorry, Cloud, but I haven't really had time to process it all yet either, and, well, I just don't know how that man stays as sane as he does." 

I was still stuck on processing most of what had happened in _Nibelheim_ , never mind what Zack was saying now. 

As a kid, I'd worshipped General Sephiroth. Put his poster over my bed, even. He'd been everything I wanted to be, tall and strong and fearless and surrounded by people who adored him, while I was none of those things. 

And then I'd come to Midgar and met Zack, and my view of the General had shifted a bit as I'd become aware of more and more inside information. Just trivial stuff, but stuff no one else had, even inside the Silver Alliance. Like the fact he took his coffee black. He wasn't very talkative, and his sense of humour was as dry as the Corel Desert. If he had any hobbies other than fighting, even Zack didn't know about them. And he didn't have many friends, either, and he'd lost two of that tiny handful just recently. My god-like childhood hero had gradually taken on the trappings of a strong, proud, but very lonely and isolated mortal man, who somehow managed to pretend that none of it _mattered_. 

I wanted to meet him more badly than ever after I'd figured that out. Because there was something about us that was a bit alike, and maybe I could pick up a few pointers about handling the world without the human safety net of friends and family. I had Zack and Mom and that was it. And Sephiroth didn't even have Mom. 

Actually meeting him . . . hadn't been anything like my dreams, childhood or otherwise. Four-thirty in the morning, piling out of the back of a truck at a misty airstrip outside Midgar and folding over to dump a few mouthfuls of bile into the bushes before making myself straighten up and line up beside the other two non-SOLDIERs who were going on this mission. I'd been standing at attention with the aftertaste of having been ignominiously sick still in my mouth when they'd both appeared like shadows in the mist. Zack, looking uncharacteristically serious. And Sephiroth. 

He was more overwhelming in person than I'd expected. Those penetrating eyes, the height of him, and just the sheer perfection of the man, not a hair out of place. Fascinating. Intimidating. 

And then came the reactor and Jenova and the lab in the mansion's basement and Vincent Valentine and his revelations, and suddenly Sephiroth knew I existed. And that was a wonderful, scary thing that was slowly sliding further towards scary, because I was starting to figure out just how crazy most of the people running Shinra were. If they were letting . . . the kind of stuff Zack had talked about . . . happen to their greatest general, the one whose existence kept places like Wutai in line, then what would they do to one little Cloud Strife if he got in the way? 

And for all of that, I had a feeling that Sephiroth really did need a friend. Or lots of friends. I just wasn't sure I could survive being one of them. 

I needed to get stronger, fast, for the sake of the others around me and not just for myself. One little mako infusion just wasn't going to cut it. I was going to have to train my butt off, just so that I wouldn't hold everyone back. 

Those thoughts carried me all the way up to the Plate and the station near Headquarters. I was through the side entrance to the Shinra building that most of the troops used and even in the elevator before I remembered my room assignment had changed. As a SOLDIER, I wouldn't be bunking in the windowless barracks down in the Pillar-basement levels anymore, but sharing a double room further up-tower. I wasn't going to make such a great impression on my new roommate, either, trailing in at this hour of the morning the first time we met, but it was too late to do anything about it now. 

They'd given me a slip of paper with the room number on it along with the key, but not the other guy's name. I'd find out when I saw the door. If it even registered. Between needing sleep and the mako hangover, I'd gone beyond being tired and was feeling floaty and weird. 

_29-A. Gunner, Strife._ I tried to remember where I'd met a Gunner, since the name sounded a little familiar, but came up blank. Well, whatever. Key. I fumbled it out, opened the door. There was a light on inside. Good—at least I wouldn't be waking anyone up. 

"Cloud?" Gravelly voice. Vincent? What was he doing h— Oh, right. He was posing as another Third. _That_ was why I'd thought I knew the name Gunner. Sephiroth or Zack had probably arranged for us to share a room, so that I'd be safe and he wouldn't be giving anything away. 

"Yeah," I managed, swaying slightly. 

"Get to bed." 

"Yeah," I repeated. Wobbled forward into the room and collapsed face-down on the bottom bunk, boots and all. 

I thought I heard Vincent sigh, right in the moment before I was dead to the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shinra's treatment of military ranks makes no sense whatsoever to me, even though what I know about that topic in the real world could fit in a thimble with room to spare. So I went ahead and ignored the bit in the original game where Cloud indicates that "First Class" is a rank in response to some question or other from Tifa (I mean, he still thought he was Zack at the time, so why would he be any more reliable about SOLDIER's internal organizational details?) and set up a simple system based on army ranks that can be named using a single word in English. That yielded ranks of General, Colonel, Major, Captain, and Lieutenant for SOLDIER officers. The regular troops have additional non-commissioned ranks of Sergeant and Corporal below that. If you believe Wikipedia, that's a flatter rank structure than most real-world military forces, but it was easy to keep track of.


	9. Chapter 9

**Vincent**

I would have gone with Sephiroth to the lab, but I didn't dare show my face in front of Hojo. It would have given too much away, too soon. Instead, Lucrecia's son showed me into his private quarters and told me to stay there until he got back. And while, despite the uniform I was currently wearing, I wasn't under his orders, I couldn't think of anything useful to do if I left. Contacting the Turks would have been premature at this point, too. Assuming there was anyone there who remembered me. 

I still wasn't quite sure what I was doing here, beyond having been pulled in by an irresistible force known as Sephiroth. That, and the need for revenge on Hojo that still festered like a fragment of filth caught under my skin. 

Sephiroth might be alive, and surprisingly stable given that he had been raised in Hojo's laboratory, but he still wasn't well, and Lucrecia . . . 

Lucrecia was still dead. That would never change. Only in stories do the dead come back to life. I would never see those green eyes looking at me again, full of light and life— 

Lucrecia's eyes had been dark. 

It had only been a few days, and already the image of her I'd carried in my mind for so long was being overlaid with her son's. Sephiroth. Cool where his mother had been warm, but possessed of the same elegance. 

I shook my head. Perhaps it was for the best, letting the image of the living chase away that of the dead. Letting the new replace the old. I couldn't do anything for Lucrecia now except avenge her, and if I were honest about it, even that was more for me than for her. Taking out my pain and my guilt on someone else. 

Sephiroth, on the other hand, was still alive. I could still help him. And maybe there would be some kind of redemption in that. 

I sighed and forced myself to focus on the present. The room Sephiroth had left me in. Odd that he lived here—I would have thought a general would be entitled to far more luxurious quarters. This single room with its shabby linoleum floor and narrow bed had confounded my expectations. 

Not that it was a _small_ room—fifteen by twenty feet, if I didn't miss my guess. Large enough that the lack of furniture made it look barren. The narrow bed, which I suspected was standard military issue, had been made to within an inch of its life, with the blankets tucked into place around the mattress and all the corners neatly creased. Against another wall, beneath the room's only window, was a desk with a straight-backed chair pushed up against it. The desk drawers were locked, and I decided against trying to force them. 

Beside the desk stood a bizarre piece of furniture I puzzled over until I realized it was a stand for Sephiroth's oversized sword, made in the Wutai style. Beyond that, a bookshelf held a number of forbidding volumes of non-fiction. The titles weren't familiar to me, but the books I pulled off the shelves so that I could read the introductions covered a variety of subjects, from military history to auto mechanics to the biology of monsters. Most of them were well-thumbed. Interestingly, there were a few volumes of fiction, mostly mysteries of the police procedural variety, stuffed in behind the more daunting books. 

Next in my circuit of the room came the doors to the closet and the private bath. I knew I was being intrusive by normal standards, but Turk training led me to snoop through the closet anyway. It didn't appear to contain anything but uniforms and parts of uniforms. If Sephiroth had any civilian clothes, he didn't keep them here. 

The bath was similarly unadorned. Even the towels were the same greyish reclaimed synthetic fabric as those they'd had at the Costa del Sol base, and the soap and other sundries were the same types I had seen Zack using. 

The final wall bore the only splash of colour I could see anywhere: a framed photograph beside the entry door. Four men. At the center, Sephiroth, looking subtly younger. Flanking him on either side, a man with reddish hair and a red coat not unlike Sephiroth's in style, and a black-haired man with a bit of beard scruff, in a First Class uniform. Zack, dressed in the uniform of a Second Class SOLDIER, was bent over in front of the other three, skewering the red man, who was pushing down on his head and ruffling his hair, with a laughing-furious look. All had the SOLDIER mako glow in their eyes. 

I wondered who the two strangers were. I had heard Zack mention the name "Angeal" a time or two—was he one of them? 

Completing my tour of the room, I sat down on the bed, as it was one of the only two places _to_ sit. 

_So,_ a long-ago (and probably long-dead) instructor said from a corner of my brain, _what can you conclude about this man from an examination of his possessions, Mr. Valentine?_ It had been a common exercise for junior Turks. Search someone's belongings, and see what you could use for manipulation or blackmail or to give you an opening to kill. 

Sephiroth didn't offer many openings, based on what I had seen here. Intelligent and self-disciplined. Few friends. Definitely not married, unless they were separated. Probably no lover, unless the other party had a uniform fetish or he had a separate wardrobe he kept somewhere else. I hadn't found any condoms, but they could be inside the locked desk drawers. Conclusion: there were no obvious manipulation or blackmail possibilities not involving Jenova or Hojo. Killing him . . . it might be possible from a distance, with a sniper rifle. I'd seen him fight now, when we'd been ambushed by some monsters inside the old mansion. Chances of a successful kill if I let him get within materia range of me were less than ten percent. Within sword range, they dropped to zero. Under those circumstances, I would need to be very lucky just to escape alive. 

_Nibelheim was on fire, and I saw him walking among the burning houses, laughing and striking out at those who tried to flee. I saw him calling down destruction from the skies, an angel of terrible power held aloft by a single wing . . . Vincent, I'm scared. I am so scared._

"Don't worry, Lucrecia," I murmured out loud. "Don't worry. I won't let it happen." My gun-hand reached out as though to grip her shoulder, as I'd done in a clumsy attempt to comfort her when I'd found her that day, huddled in the conservatory, weeping . . . but of course, she wasn't here, in this not-quite-sterile room. 

I shook my head again, and went to pull a book from the shelves, a volume on the Wutai War that seemed to have taken place while I was . . . apart from the world. Since I had nothing better to do, I might as well take the time to fill in my general knowledge. The only other option for passing the time was sleeping, and I wasn't tired despite having spent the previous night on Zack Fair's couch, in a room smaller but much more cluttered than this. 

I had slept more than enough already. Enough for a lifetime. 

The book on the war had margin notes written in a neat, angular hand, most of them scathing: _East, not west. Did anyone do any research on this?_ and _It was a MUD PUDDLE, not a lake._ Plus many more in the same vein. Sephiroth had to have _hated_ the author of this book. Perhaps it was the undisciplined approach to research. Sephiroth clearly appreciated discipline. 

I had read perhaps a hundred pages when the door to the hallway opened and Sephiroth entered, alone. He nodded to me, put his sword on the stand I'd noticed earlier, then stripped off his shoulder armour and tossed it to the scarred surface of the desk, where it clanged and slid to rest against the wall. Sephiroth then strode to the closet, grabbed the bottom half of one of his uniforms, then went into the bathroom and locked the door. A moment later, I heard the sound of the shower starting up. I could certainly understand a desperate desire for cleanliness after having been touched by Hojo. The only thing that surprised me a little was that he had left his weapon out here with me. It appeared that Sephiroth genuinely did trust me, although _why_ he did so was still in question. I would have expected him to be more wary. 

He came out of the bathroom wearing only the spare set of uniform trousers he'd taken in with him, his gloves, and a materia wristlet, carrying his boots in one hand and his coat folded over his arm. The boots were left at the foot of the bed, and the coat folded over the back of the desk chair. Every movement was graceful, muscles flexing smoothly under his skin, the results of years of sword training showing through even in these mundane actions. 

Really, Sephiroth was a very attractive man, although how he had turned out so well given the combination of genes he had inherited, I wasn't certain. Perhaps Hojo was hiding some useful recessives somewhere in that carcass of his. 

He unlocked one of the desk drawers and pulled out a hairbrush. I raised my eyebrows. 

"Small items tend to go missing if I don't keep them under lock and key," Sephiroth explained as he sat down straddling the desk chair and began to brush his hair out. "It's the cleaning staff, of course, but firing them never does any good—the next one to come along always gets the same idea eventually. I understand that members of my so-called fan club are willing to pay up to ten thousand gil for used towels, never mind anything more personal. More importantly, I should have your assignments—housing, duties, and such—sorted out by the end of today, so you won't need to spend so much time hiding in other people's rooms. I hope you don't mind rooming with Strife. If I tried to give an unranked Third Class a single, it would draw attention in all the wrong ways." 

I shook my head. "Cloud's a good kid. We'll manage. I'm more interested in what you intend to do next." 

"I don't know." Sephiroth tossed the brush back into the drawer and ran both hands through his hair, frowning. "I need to get into the records of the Science Department, but so far I've been unable to formulate a viable plan to do so. The paper records are kept in a separate room on those floors that I don't have access to, with heavier security than the main archives, and their computers are on a separate network as well. Given how well-guarded the area is, I can't see a way to get in and out without leaving any traces." 

"I could probably get myself in and out, but not someone else." I didn't know that for certain, but it _was_ one of the things I'd been trained for. If there was a way, I could find it. 

"And bypass the security on the computers?" My expression must have told him the answer, because he added, "I'm not surprised. It's a very specialized skillset that was in its infancy twenty-five years ago. I've studied it, but I wouldn't give my own odds of getting at the data without leaving obvious traces as better than one in three. The current generation of Turks may have more appropriate training, but they have no reason to help us, and Veld and I don't get along especially well." 

" _Veld?_ " I asked sharply. "Veld Verdot?" 

"You know him." 

"We were partners at one time." And he still owed me a couple of drinks, three hundred gil, and, as a consequence of a bizarre mishap involved a stray chocobo on a long-ago mission near Junon, a pair of sunglasses. 

"Do you think you can persuade him to help?" 

"There would be no question. Once he learns what happened, he'll want Hojo's head just as much as you and I do." 

Being in the Turks means that you can't completely trust anyone on the outside. It's in the nature of the job—being Shinra's garbage men and quietly cleaning up their filth. Over time, you accumulate layer upon layer of secrets that can't be discussed except with your own. And that means always having each other's backs, because the other Turks are the only ones you can rely on. 

What Hojo had done to me twenty-five years ago should have meant a death sentence for him, a hit arranged with no one but Turks in the know, and, to prevent the higher-ups at Shinra finding out, never discussed afterwards even within the group. He'd escaped until now because he'd managed to keep the other Turks from finding out. 

The leaden despair I'd been feeling since Lucrecia's death was slowly dissipating. Replacing it was a cold flame of anger. 

_Hojo, I won't let you win._

Sephiroth was pulling on his boots. Once again, I found myself watching him. His expression was like the one his mother had often worn when grappling with a particularly knotty problem, but pared down to a narrowing of the eyes and a hint of a line between his brows. With Lucrecia, I'd always felt the impulse to kiss that line away, although I had never quite dared . . . 

Why had that thought crossed my mind just now? 

"Vincent." Fully clad, with his sword back on his back, Sephiroth was moving toward the door. I pushed myself to my feet and followed him out into the hallway. 

The Turks' headquarters were on the thirteenth floor. Wade, who had been in charge when Veld and I had joined up, would have thought it was appropriate. His sense of humour had been very basic. The rooms were laid out in exactly the same way as they had been in the pre-Plate building I remembered, although the decor was completely different. Not that the olive-green carpet from the old days was much of a loss to the world. 

There had been a handful of junior agents sitting in the lounge, talking, when the door opened, but Sephiroth's entry sent ripples of silence spreading through the room. There was no doubt he was an unexpected presence. 

"Anything we can help you with, Gen'ral?" The question came from a man who had just appeared from the inner offices, a thin red-head with a sly face whose untucked shirt made him look unkempt. I suspected it was really an attempt to conceal the shock-rod he carried. _Close-quarters attack specialist; keep your distance in a fight._

"Reno, is it? I'm here to see Veld," Sephiroth said. 

Reno, if that was his name, gave us both a complicated look. He'd noticed me, and I could see him trying to place me and failing. "Right, just a sec and I'll see if he's free." 

He disappeared into the back offices again, leaving Sephiroth and I with the junior Turks. Who weren't experienced enough yet to ignore the SOLDIER General's aura of intimidation, it seemed, because they all looked like they were going to crawl out of their skins. 

Fortunately for them, we didn't have to wait very long for Reno to come back. 

"He'll see you," the red-head said. "This way—crap." Sephiroth had already swept past him, and I was on his heels. 

Many of the doors along the back hallway had no nameplates on them, but I couldn't remember there ever having been more than half a dozen senior Turks at a time. It's a job with a high mortality rate. _Reno_ , I read. _Rude._ _Tseng_. None of them names I could link to faces, except that of our guide. Mortality, again. I was surprised that even one other Turk from twenty-five years ago was still alive. 

Veld had the big office at the end of the hall. I followed Sephiroth in and shut the door. In Reno's face, but this meeting wasn't for him to know about. We'd leave it to Veld to decide what to tell him. 

"General Sephiroth. Unusual to see you here." Same voice, perhaps roughened a little by age and wear. Without it, I wouldn't have recognized the man behind the desk. For a moment, I could only think numbly, _He has a beard. When did he go and grow a beard?_

So far, since emerging from the coffin, I'd been . . . touching down lightly . . . with respect to the time I'd missed. Until now, I hadn't met anyone in the current timeframe that I'd known then—Sephiroth as a fetus did _not_ count—and my own face was unchanged. But now, seeing what the years had done to the man who had once been my partner, I felt like I'd invoked a Lightning materia on myself. The Veld I remembered had been a cleanshaven newlywed, not yet thirty, not this worn-looking middle-aged man. 

_Pay attention,_ I told myself. _This is business._ Veld's attention was on Sephiroth. He hadn't even given me a once-over as Reno had done outside. 

"You're getting lazy, Veld," I said. "Didn't you once get shot by a girl on a mission in Costa del Sol because you thought she was just the target's bedwarmer, and not his bodyguard? You need to pay attention to everyone around you." 

Veld did look at me then, and went absolutely white. " _Vincent?_ But you—I saw the death certificate—eaten by a Nibel dragon . . ." 

"Is _that_ what Hojo put on the papers to explain why he didn't send the body back? It was more like 'shot by a Hojo at three paces'. You're not the only one capable of being careless. I got too emotionally involved in what was going on in Nibelheim." It was difficult to get the words out. Careless, indeed. Letting Hojo get the drop on me had been the most shameful moment of my life. A professional killed by an amateur. 

Veld shook his head, then combed his fingers through his hair—a nervous gesture that I remembered well. It settled him enough that he was able to focus again. "If this had just been to inform me of a 'Turk down' situation from twenty-five years ago, you would have found me after work. Alone. Tell me what you need." 

"It's about Hojo," I said, moving over to perch on a corner of Veld's desk. Sephiroth took a half-step back and to the side, putting himself squarely in front of the closed door. 

"I can't kill him, Vincent. And I can't let you do it either. He's too valuable to the company." 

"It isn't his life we want," Sephiroth said. "Not this time, at least. What we want are his _records_. Both Vincent and I, in our current states, are products of Hojo's experimentation, but neither of us knows the details of what was done, or the observations he's made of us. I believe you know something of what happened to Genesis Rhapsodos. For all I know, that could be _me_ in a month's time. Or Vincent. Or all of my SOLDIERs. Or even worse, we could all end up going on a rampage through Midgar if some unknown condition is met. You and the regular army would have no chance of stopping us." 

"Hojo's a loose cannon," I added. "Being the sole custodian of that information gives him too much power within Shinra." It sounded good, anyway. I hadn't had time to figure out where the flows and eddies of power in this new Shinra lay, but given Hojo's personality, he had to have injected himself in somewhere. Unofficially, I was sure, but Veld would be aware of it. 

"No outsider has free access to the Science Department records," Veld was saying. "Not even the president. And I've tried to slip people in there before. It can't be done without starting years in advance. Everyone in the department knows everyone else, they do their own cleaning rather than leave it to the custodial staff, and some of the experiments roam the halls during the night. Hojo always seems to detect anyone who's been bribed or blackmailed before they can pass on anything useful. The last time we tried to go in the hard way, I nearly lost Tseng, and he's the best I have." 

Sephiroth's mouth thinned. "Tseng is a bodyguard, not an infiltrator. Don't you have anyone better?" 

"Cissnei, but she's on medical leave." 

"And Vincent can't work the computers, and if I disappear anywhere for more than half an hour at most, everyone will know." Sephiroth's voice was level, but he was standing very, very still. As though he were afraid of what he would reveal by moving. 

"There's another way," I said slowly. "Maybe." 

Instantly, I was being raked by green Mako eyes. "Tell me." 

"Turk method of last resort," I said, and Veld's eyes widened in sudden understanding. "If you can't do a thing quietly and unnoticeably, make such a mess that afterwards, no one will know who got away with what." 

Sephiroth tilted his head. "You're suggesting we arrange to trash Shinra Tower for the second time in six months." 

"In a controlled way," Veld said. "It _could_ work. There are two major and several minor anti-Shinra groups at large in the city. AVALANCHE is keeping to itself right now, but the Wutai-based organizations are happy to take any opportunity to ruin the President's day. If we have several of them in motion at the same time, and cut the electricity, you'll have an excuse to get into the research labs and the document storage for a hunt without anyone being able to see what you're _actually_ doing . . . and someone to blame anything missing on, afterwards." 

"We'll need help in stirring up these anti-Shinra groups of yours," I said. Everyone on our side had mako eyes—even Cloud Strife, after today. Infiltrating a group with a dislike of Shinra would be out of the question. 

"You'll have it. I have a couple of people in the two big groups already. We Turks look after our own, General," Veld added, correctly interpreting Sephiroth's expression as skepticism. "And it looks like we owe Hojo a bullet or two. With a quarter-century of interest. Not to mention that Vincent's right about Hojo having gotten his creepy little fingers into far too many things lately. Or at least, he had the authority to send _you_ to a place like Nibelheim. And he's already tampered with one Turk." Veld nodded at me. "I'd like some idea of what he's up to on those carefully-protected floors of his. As things stand, I can't plan, and that makes me worried." 

"Very well. We'll be in touch." Sephiroth had the door open before he'd even spoken the last syllable, but as I tried to get up, Veld caught my wrist. 

"General, can I borrow him for a moment? If he's going to be our new liaison with SOLDIER, I need to lay a few ground rules." A nice excuse to explain why I was here to anyone listening outside the door. 

Sephiroth looked at me, and, when I gave him the tiniest of nods, faked an exasperated sigh. "Very well, but I need him back. Half an hour, no more." He stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind him, leaving me alone with Veld. 

Veld let go of my wrist, and relaxed slightly. "Ugh. I'm not sure exactly what it is about that man, but being shut in a room with him always makes me feel like I'm trapped in a pressure cooker. Even when he's being relatively polite. I suppose he must have found you in Nibelheim and let you out of wherever Hojo had you locked up, but I never expected you to be so grateful you'd sign up for SOLDIER." 

"I didn't. Sephiroth thought putting me in uniform would be the easiest way to make someone with mako eyes disappear into the background, and I couldn't come up with a better idea. So far it seems to have worked—even _you_ didn't look at me until I spoke up." 

"You've got a point there. I may be trusting the youngsters too much." Veld ran his hand through his hair again. 

"How's Paula?" I asked after he'd been silent for a moment too long. 

Veld froze. ". . . Dead." 

"You can't be serious. She was younger than either of us." 

"She was killed. She, and our daughter." Veld stared down at his hands. "There was an information leak. In Kalm. The President ordered me to get rid of it 'by any means'." 

I felt my eyes widen as ice slid down my spine. "Veld. You didn't." 

"I did. By the time the firebombs had burned out, they were both dead. Maybe if we split the emotional involvement that led you to get shot by Hojo in half and each took a part, we'd both have just enough to be decent human beings without getting into trouble." My old partner gave me a pained smile. "That wasn't what I held you back here to talk about, though." 

"What, then?" 

"Sephiroth. Be very, very careful of him, Vincent. I'm not sure he's sane." 

I shrugged and got down off the desk. "I'm not sure I am, either."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know "Veld" and "Verdot" are different romanizations of the same Japanese text, but they're different enough in English to be two different names, and he's never given any other last name, so . . .


	10. Chapter 10

**Zack**

"It's just the cutest thing, Zack, and we really need to _beep!_ " Aerith said as I stared at her. " _Beep beep beep beep beep!_ " 

Aw, crap. That wasn't Aerith, that was my alarm clock. Set for six in the morning, because Seph insisted on my being there at his office at seven sharp no matter how long I'd been up the night before. Good thing SOLDIERs don't need much sleep. Get up, splash some cold water on my face, and I was as alert as I ever was. I changed into a uniform, hung the Buster Sword on my back, and went down to the cafeteria for breakfast. At this hour, it was all SOLDIERs there, too, since the regular military posted on-site had their own mess hall somewhere in the below-Plate levels and the other tower staff mostly hadn't arrived for work yet. 

"Well, if it isn't the special transfer and the mystery man." 

Say what you like about life in SOLDIER—it really isn't all that much different than life in any other branch of the military, except that we wave swords around instead of guns and get to do cool-looking stuff that would kill normal people. For instance, there's always someone in the ranks who thinks it's a good idea to make things rough for the new guy. This time, it was about four Third Classes, all clustered around the table where Vincent and Cloud were eating. I wasn't sure what Cloud was even doing vertical after the night I'd given him, but whatever. He was here, and I had to deal with the situation as it already existed. 

Sephiroth didn't approve of hazing. Well, he hadn't after I'd told him what it was. Apparently, the only time anyone had tried something on him, he'd kind of . . . broken them. About ten of them, all by himself. After that, no one had dared try again. And he hadn't realized it was a general thing until I'd explained. I had standing orders to break up anything I came across, and assign the people involved extra drills to, as he put it, work off their excess energy. 

One of the Thirds reached for Vincent's tray and found his hand in the grip of a golden metal claw. Vince ignored him otherwise and kept on eating, letting blood drip on the table between the trays from where his left-hand weapon was cutting into the other man, who couldn't seem to pull loose, SOLDIER or no SOLDIER. Whatever Hojo had done to Vince had to have been closer to Seph's or Angeal's level of enhancement than it was to mine. But then, I'd kind of suspected that all along. 

_Drip, drip, drip . . ._

In the end, one of the man's friends couldn't stand it anymore, and reached for Vince's shoulder. I figured that was my signal to go ahead and break it up. 

"Hey, Cloud," I said, stepping forward. "You okay? You've got the day off, you know. All Thirds get twenty-four hours of post-infusion medical leave." When Vince glanced at me, I gave him a tiny little nod, and he let the idiot's wrist go. The Third Class snatched his arm back with a grimace, and he and his friends backed off. Quickly, across two rows of tables. I might not have Seph's talent for intimidating people with a glance, but I had rank, and everyone knew it. 

"I know," Cloud said. "Sir," he added, since we were in company. "But I'm going to go crazy if I just lie in bed. I figured I could put in a couple of hours of practice, tire myself out a bit again, and _then_ go back to bed." 

Then I noticed his hands were shaking, and I figured it out. Mako jitters. Most people don't get those until their third or fourth infusion, when the stuff starts to mess with the nerves and speed them up. Cloud had to be extra-sensitive or something, and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. 

"Fine," I said. "But keep in mind that I'm going to be checking up on you. General Sephiroth's orders." Seph hadn't actually given me any, since I hadn't seen him since we'd parted ways outside the labs yesterday, but I was willing to bet that he _would_ , once I told him about this. Or at least that he'd give one of his little sighs and let me pretend. "And Gunner—clean up that blood when you go to bus your tray. Stuff like that scares the clerical staff, and we've got to share this place with them." 

"Right," Vincent said, not even bothering to look at me this time. 

"And if you have to fight, don't break any furniture," I added, pitching my voice so that only the three of us could hear. "Or any civilians." 

Vincent gave me another tiny nod to show he understood, and I finally went to fill my tray and find an empty table to eat at. That was one of the non-privileges of rank that I'd discovered since my last promotion: there weren't many other SOLDIER officers, and if a major sat with any of the enlisted men, people started talking about favouritism. Seph never set foot in the cafeteria at all, but I wasn't willing to give up the decent food we got down here in favour of eating rat bars at my desk, and ordering pizza or Wutainese takeout every day ate into the part of my paycheck I could send back to my parents in Gongaga. I could have sent a minion down to fetch stuff for me the way Seph sometimes did, but that always made me feel like I was being lazy. So I sat alone and ate quickly and wished they'd promote a few more people, even if they were assholes like Genesis, so that I'd have someone to talk at. 

I got to Sephiroth's office at seven on the dot, only to find that he had already unlocked the door. The woman who minded the outer office wasn't there yet, so I went straight through and opened the inner door to Seph's office proper without knocking. I wasn't going to go to my own much smaller office and desk yet, not if I could help it. I _hate_ paperwork. 

Seph had cleared off the top of his desk, which meant neat piles of paper arranged on the floor to either side, and was frowning down at . . . was that a map? A brand-new map, even, since he was holding a ruler in one hand and a pen in the other, and the labels were in his handwriting. 

I walked around the desk so that we were on the same side. "'Floor 67'," I read out loud. "'Prison cells'?" I added, noticing another notation off to the side. "Shit, really?" 

"Technically, they're intended to house unruly animal specimens," Sephiroth said. "But 'prison cell' is the net effect." 

"Why are you drawing a map of one of the lab levels?" 

"Because it turns out that there are no other maps more recent than the construction of the building, and those don't match the layout of the area as of eleven years ago, which is the most recent information I have for parts of it." Seph set down the ruler and the pen with a firmness that told me he wasn't happy. "Even Veld can't get anyone in there." 

"Doesn't that mean we're kind of stuck?" 

Seph shook his head. "Veld, Vincent, and I came up with an alternative plan. It's going to be messy, but at the moment I think it's our best chance." 

"Since when are you so tight with Veld?" 

"I'm not, but it turns out that he and Vincent were partners at one time. The legendary close-knittedness of the Turks did the rest." Seph considered the map a moment more, then rolled it up and handed it to me. "Study this. You, Vincent, and Cloud Strife. Don't let anyone else see it. I'll have one for the floor above for you tomorrow." 

"You're going to involve Cloud in whatever-this-is?" I really didn't have a good feeling about that. "You _do_ remember that he's just barely a Third, right?" 

Seph brushed that away. "He's strong-minded enough to be able to do mundane tasks while other people are fighting around him. I don't expect to need him to do any fighting himself." 

"Well, that's . . . better, but I'd still rather leave him at home." 

"I don't have that luxury, Zack. None of us do." Sephiroth sounded tired, all of a sudden. It made all the stuff from yesterday morning, that I'd been trying to push out of my mind, jump back into my head. Bar codes. Mako. Ugh. 

"I'm going to go try to get a head start on those transfer recommendations," I said, dodging back around the desk and trying not to step on any paper piles. Seph's eyes said that he knew I was running away, but I knew he wasn't going to call me on it, because he never did. 

It wasn't until I was in my own office, sitting at my own desk, that I realized what I'd done. I hadn't just run out on Seph, I'd run out on him because the crap in the lab had given me the creeps, and that was just _wrong_. I mean, if it had been because of something he'd done, that would be . . . not great, but okay. _Acceptable._ On the other hand, doing it because of something he couldn't _help_ , something that other people were doing _to_ him, when he had so few friends already . . . It made me feel like a dick of the first order. And that he was so used to things like that that he didn't really care just made me feel worse. 

He'd just be bewildered if I apologized, though. Seph was so out of touch with his feelings that I don't think he was aware when they were hurt. It made making things up to him difficult too. I mean, what kind of nice thing could you do for a guy who wouldn't let himself _want_ anything? Well, I could always order lunch again, and keep him away from the rat bars. I sighed as I felt my paycheck shrinking again. 

I spent two hours staring at those stupid transfer forms—I think I managed to get through about half of them—before I found my hands twitching with the _need_ to doodle chocobos on them. At that point, I figured it was time for a break, so I got up, put my sword back on, and went down one floor to the forty-ninth, where most of the SOLDIER facilities were. Including the training rooms. 

_The_ Training Rooms were the holographic ones, of course, but there were two others that were more like hardened gyms, where people did basic practice or instructors gave sessions. Cloud was in the first one I looked into, steadily working through those basic moves over and over again, although he was now able to use the lightest grade of practice sword instead of a stick. Less than a day after his first mako dose. Pretty impressive, although it did happen sometimes. 

I felt someone come up behind me. I should have heard him first, but there was no heartbeat. Somehow I wasn't surprised, when I turned around, to find out that it was Vincent Valentine. And that gave me an idea. 

"Mind if I borrow you for a moment?" 

Vince shrugged. "I have nowhere in particular I need to be." 

"Good." And I pushed open the door to the training room, small-T-small-R. 

Everyone stopped what they were doing and saluted the moment I stepped in the door. Another non-privilege of being an officer. 

"As you were," I said, returning the salutes. "Gunner, I hear you're good at hand-to-hand." Actually, I hadn't heard anything of the sort, but I knew Turks were trained, and Vince's insane level of enhancement would help if he was only averagely skilled. I unhooked the Buster Sword and put it on one of the racks off to the side. "Mind giving me a demo?" 

It was the best way I could think of to demonstrate that "Vincent Gunner" had some business being here, and maybe keep a bit of the flak off him. Once I was done with that, I'd deal with Cloud. 

Vincent had unlooped his gunbelt. There were no appropriate racks for it, so he hung it over the hilt of the Buster Sword and made several people snicker. But I had a feeling that was the reaction he'd been aiming for, anyway. 

"You realize I can't take this off," he said, holding up his brass claw. 

"After I saw you wearing it in the shower, I kind of figured." I took up a ready stance, balanced, hands poised to do . . . whatever seemed like a good idea. The style Angeal had taught me was wide-ranging. 

"Very well, then." Vince took up a casual stance. For about half a second. Then he shot forward and came within a hair of ramming the mako-annealed-steel-reinforced toe of a standard issue SOLDIER boot into my ribs. I just barely managed to get inside the radius of his kick and move with him, so that I only picked up a light bruise. If he'd been wearing those pointy sabatons he'd had on when we'd found him in the coffin, he might have punched a hole in me. 

I leaned back to avoid a knife-hand strike directed at my eyes, then jumped forward. Vince's height was close enough to mine that I didn't have any advantage in reach, but he was skinny, and there were limits to how far you could enhance muscle. I figured my best chance at winning was to force him to wrestle me, because if he kept jumping around like this, I'd never get an attack in. He was just too fast. 

And he knew how to use my charge to his advantage too, damn him, because I found myself hitting the floor after what I realized belatedly had been some kind of shoulder throw. I slapped my hands down to reduce the impact, then sprang back up. This time, I decided to try circling. Slowly. 

Vince kept pace with me, not lunging in to attack again. Maybe he figured it was my turn this time, since he'd taken the initiative the first time. Okay, then. I stopped moving leftward, shimmied my butt like I was going to switch and go right instead, then shot in and went low. 

Vince vaulted over my kick, but that left him in a predictable position in the air for half a second. That was what I needed, a chance to get my hands on him. I grabbed. He kicked my leg out from under me, and we rolled around on the floor a bit, and a bit more. In the end, we fetched up with my hands around his throat, and his claw against mine. 

"That's your win, I think," I was forced to say, feeling the metal with every swallow. "Since I'd probably bleed to death before I could finish strangling you." 

"I should never have let you get so close," was Vince's reply as he got off me. Good thing he was light. He dusted himself off, then went and put his gunbelt back on. 

"You're probably a bit out of practice," I said, and he shrugged. 

"Perhaps." 

Vince was a really talkative guy. The first person I'd ever met who was quieter than Seph. 

"Has the General figured out where he's going to put you to work?" I asked, to fill up the silence. 

"SOLDIER liaison to the Turks. As of yesterday." 

I raised my eyebrows. Huh. Trust Seph. That was almost . . . inspired. 

"Well, don't forget to brush up on the regs," I said. "Things have changed since the war, and I know you haven't exactly been at the center of things." He'd been getting the most public stuff, like salutes, close enough to right, but if he got too close to an officer that wasn't me or Seph, it would be way too easy for him to slip up. 

"That's my intention, Major. Excuse me." 

He was going to have to work harder on getting the body language right, I decided as I watched Vince leave. He still looked kinda-sorta floaty. I hoped I was the only one who noticed. 

Well, okay, that was done, and I hoped the word would get out that "Vincent Gunner" was no one to trifle with. Now for Cloud. His problem was a little different, though. Vince was only playing at being a SOLDIER for the time being, but Cloud was in for life now. He needed to get _integrated_ , or at least as much as he ever could be when he was getting special attention from me and Seph. 

I kind of wished we could just let the kid be an ordinary Third Class—the part about the special promotion would wear off soon enough when everyone saw that he was the kind of person who worked his butt off trying to do things right. But Seph had made it clear that Cloud was _one of us_ now, part of a special, tiny circle of trusted people close to the General. I needed to nudge things along a bit if he wasn't going to be a pariah everywhere except with us. 

"Strife," I greeted him as I walked up beside him. 

"Major Fair." Not a single hesitation, no slips where he almost called me _Zack_ , and he didn't even stop swishing the sword around. "If you would care to show me the next routine, sir, I'd appreciate it." 

So even our diligent little Spiky could get bored with practicing the same thing over and over again for months at a time. That was good to know. 

"I had something a bit different in mind," I said, looking around the room. Okay, there. "Dane! Lieutenant Miller, would you please come over here for a sec?" 

"Sure thing, Major." Dane Miller was a Second Class, dark-skinned, with a scarred, bald head—the scars, which came from his early days in Wutai when he'd still been regular army, made him half-bald anyway, so he'd decided that both sides might as well match. He was also the second-shortest person in the room, after Cloud. And he was a solid, steady guy who followed orders and thought hazing was for insecure losers. 

"This is Cloud Strife," I said, waving at Spike. "The General wants him up to speed as soon as possible, but my working with him isn't going to do any good—I'm too tall, so my style's all wrong for him. I figured you could show him the best way for a height-challenged person to handle a sword." 

Dane's teeth contrasted sharply with his dark skin as he laughed. "'Height-challenged'. You get that out of one of those manuals on how to write politically correct reports, sir?" 

I shrugged. "What can I say? They keep giving us this stuff, and I keep on trying to figure out a way to see if the General's face would crack if he ever smiled for real. Much less laughed." 

Dane shook his head. "Right. Strife, was it? Show me what you've got." 

I watched them for a bit before leaving, since they seemed to be doing okay. I couldn't spend all my time with Cloud if he was going to find his own place here. 

With the Buster Sword re-slung across my back, I crossed the hallway to one of _the_ Training Rooms and swiped my ID card. Stepped inside, and looked at the options offered to me by the interface on my PHS. _Repeat Last,_ I tapped, and the room dissolved and reformed around me. 

A flat, grassy hilltop fringed with dumbapple trees. A familiar place I'd never actually seen in real life. And at the center of the clearing, a man stood, silent and unmoving. 

I smiled. "Well, it's been a rough few days, but I think we're over it now," I said. "I have Dane working with Cloud. I figure he can probably give him a solid foundation. And I owe Seph another round of Wutainese—me and my big mouth. I never knew that Hojo was so hard on him. The crap he goes through . . . it makes me mad enough I'm kind of surprised I didn't go on a rampage through the labs. Even though I knew he was counting on me to keep myself under control." 

Still no reply or movement. Angeal's face stared at me blankly, and I wondered why I kept trying to fool myself like this. It was like talking to a grave, but I couldn't _get_ to his grave . . . so I guess this was the best available substitute. 

I drew the Buster Sword. _Begin Program,_ I tapped on the PHS, and Angeal, still blank-faced, started to move.


	11. Chapter 11

**Sephiroth**

The bleat of my PHS woke me from an intensely vivid dream of a day in the life of a mundane bank clerk. I had dreams like that sometimes for the first few days after a mako treatment. Fortunately, I only remembered them if something woke me in the middle of one, because I found them oddly unsettling. If even the weakest monster had come charging through the window of that bank, none of the workers could have defended themselves. They would just have died. 

The PHS bleated again, and I swept the damnable thing off the bedside table and opened it. "Sephiroth." I didn't bother to hide my irritation. 

"We have a problem." Veld. Of course. He was one of the few people who would be foolish enough to wake me in the middle of the night. 

_The President's wife found his porn stash._ I didn't say it, and was a little surprised the thought had even crossed my mind. Perhaps Zack was rubbing off on me. 

"Go on," I said instead. 

"A behemoth has been sighted on the edge of the wasteland." 

My eyes narrowed. A behemoth directly outside Midgar was not good news, but what was it doing here? Normally they only spilled over into the wasteland during mating season, and that wouldn't be for months. 

Right now, though, the important thing was to get rid of it. Midgar's passive defenses weren't up to handling something of that magnitude. A live behemoth meant a lot of dead people. 

"Ten minutes," I said tersely, throwing off my blankets. 

"We'll have a helicopter waiting. I suggest you bring Major Fair." 

"Understood." I closed the PHS again, my other hand already reaching for my clothes. There was no time to select a set of materia tailored for use against this specific beast—I would have to go with my default choices, and hope they were sufficient. With Masamune on my back, I strode out the door. I couldn't run where anyone might see me, not under these circumstances. Running would suggest a lack of confidence. I walked quickly, though, until I was outside Zack's door, hammering on it. 

There was no response from the inside, not even a sleepy "Go 'way". I stopped knocking and put my ear to the door. There was no one alive in the room beyond. No breathing, no heartbeat. 

My keycard had an override function that could open any door in the SOLDIER areas of the building except Lazard's former quarters. I didn't use it often, but this time I hesitated only a fraction before swiping it through the lock. 

Inside, I confirmed that Zack's bed hadn't been slept in. And he still didn't put his clothes away properly. The condition of his quarters notwithstanding, he clearly hadn't returned home tonight. I could call him, but unless he was in the building—unlikely, as I suspected he was in the slums, either drinking or spending time with his mysterious girlfriend—then he would waste precious time getting to the helicopter. Time we didn't have. And yet going out to fight a behemoth alone was a fool's move. I needed someone to watch my back and keep the other monsters off me while I dealt with the primary threat. Without Zack, the optimum choice would be a full squad of lesser SOLDIERs, but the helicopter wasn't likely to be big enough . . . 

My feet were already moving by the time I realized consciously that I'd made a decision. _Vincent_. I didn't know the full extent of his abilities, but if the ex-Turk could hit a hovering zu in the eye, he should be able to handle a few Kalm fangs. 

Rather than take the elevator, I went to the stairwell, leaping down half a flight at a time to the twenty-ninth floor. Outside of 29-A, I used my keycard again. 

" _Vincent!_ " I hissed into the darkened room. 

Red mako eyes flickered. He was in the top bunk, then vaulting out of it. He had slept fully clothed, as though in enemy territory. _As we all are, right now._

"Come with me," I added. He nodded without speaking and began to pull his boots on. 

"Whuzzit?" The voice from the bottom bunk wasn't Zack's, but it sounded similar somehow. 

"Nothing. Go back to sleep." Vincent was looping his gunbelt around his waist as he spoke. 

"'Kay." Cloud subsided again. With Vincent in the hall beside me, I let the door fall shut again as quietly as I could manage. 

"Monster eruption outside the city," I told him, turning and walking as quickly as I could toward the stairs. "Zack isn't here—probably down in the slums—and the other SOLDIERs would be more of a hindrance than a help." 

We were inside the stairwell now, and I began to make my way up in long leaps, only half-surprised when Vincent was able to keep pace. 

"What will we be facing?" was his brief question as we passed the forty-third floor. 

"Behemoth. Or so I was told." 

Zack would have continued pestering me for details I didn't have, but Vincent seemed to understand that the brief response meant I had reached the end of my information. 

The access to the non-executive helicopter pad was at the back of the fifty-eighth floor. I suspected I could find it in my sleep, after all the emergency missions I'd been on that had left from here. I could see the pilot from the moment I tore through the doorway and ran for the door in the helicopter itself: Reno. I repressed an exasperated sigh. The young Turk was something of a cowboy pilot. 

The Turk blinked when he saw Vincent climb in after me. "Thought you were bringing Hewley's Puppy, Gen'ral." 

"He wasn't available," I said. Not bothering to correct him about Zack's name. Reno wasn't capable of remaining formal. I didn't know how he managed when he was on bodyguard duty. Perhaps he kept his mouth shut. 

"Oookay. Fasten your seatbelts, 'cause this is gonna be one wild ride." 

I slid Masamune onto the nearest rack and jammed an insulated headset on as the rotors spun up. As far as I was concerned, not having my ears ring for hours because of the noise pollution inside our transportation was more important than not being thrown around the cabin. I dropped into a seat as we were lifting off. 

Within minutes, we hit the early-morning air turbulence around Midgar, the boundary between the heat rising from the city and the considerably colder air rising from the wasteland outside in the autumn predawn. Vincent was staring out the windows, searching for our target. I suspected we had a few minutes to go yet, given the extent of the early warning system. Doubtless it hadn't been completed yet when he had last set foot in Midgar. 

"There." Vincent pointed, and I'd seen something moving as well. Something large. But . . . 

"If it's our behemoth, it's too far in," I said. Behemoths were both extremely physically strong and powerful natural spellcasters, but no one had ever accused them of being fast. 

"Or there's more than one of them." 

_I hope not._ But the silhouette visible in the light shed by the helicopter was clearly a quadruped with a single long horn. 

"Drop us," I ordered Reno, reaching for Masamune. 

"Right you are, Gen'ral. Twenty feet up good with you two? I'd rather not get too close." 

I checked Vincent, who nodded. "Good enough," I said, and the helicopter began to drop. 

Vincent opened the door before we'd quite stopped moving. Evidently I wasn't the only one who had done this sort of thing before. So much the better. 

I threw the headset aside. _Battle._ The last vestiges of sleepiness were burning away as my heart began to accelerate, my body priming itself for sudden, explosive motion. 

With Masamune under one arm, I jumped, and a bare second later I was on the ground. Vincent landed beside me and pulled out his gun, and I hung Masamune back in her place and waved the helicopter away—twenty feet off the ground wasn't high enough for safety if the behemoth decided to rear up on its hind legs. While I couldn't claim I _liked_ Reno, he was a surprisingly efficient operative and would be a loss to the company as a whole if he were killed. 

And besides, _Zack_ liked the man. If I killed him for no reason, I'd never hear the end of it. 

The behemoth growled. The spiked tail that came sweeping at us out of the darkness wasn't unexpected. Vincent got a shot in as he jumped to avoid it. I dodged around the tip, getting close enough for just a moment to realize that there was something _unexpected_ wrong. Surely I hadn't just seen what I thought I had seen . . . ? It had to be the starlight. Didn't it? 

I reached out with my mind for the Fire materia embedded in Masamune's hilt, and every weed within a twenty-foot radius blazed up. There wasn't much fuel springing from the cracked dirt in this area, but it was enough to give me a quick look at the behemoth in proper colour. 

The damnable beast was _brown_. Not purple. A king behemoth? On this continent? The creature had to have been brought here and released on purpose by someone. 

And I could only think of one someone who would do something so reckless. 

" _Hojo,_ " I growled. _So is this supposed to be a punishment? Some sort of demonstration of how powerless I am?_

I was, I decided as I vaulted onto the creature's back, going to leave it in at least four pieces. Not that the carcass would stay around for more than a few moments once it was dead. Monsters weren't natural creatures. They dissolved after death. 

_I wonder, will the same thing happen to me?_

Irritated that I'd wasted even that much thought on the matter, I stabbed downwards. Monster bone is harder than steel, and I didn't want to get Masamune caught in this thing's flesh. The easiest route to the heart of a quadruped this size involved slipping through the space between the shoulder blade and the spine. It was big enough that I had to drop to one knee to push Masamune in deep enough. 

I had to jump clear as the giant creature crashed down on its side. Fortunately, my sword came out cleanly. 

Somewhere on the far side of the creature, I heard Vincent's gun bark, once, and again. And another behemoth's roar . . . but the one I had just killed was already glaze-eyed and dissolving. There was no time to wait for it to clear. I ran around to the other side, cursing inwardly. 

The light was starting to warm towards pre-dawn now. Which meant it was bright enough for me to be able to pick out the three additional massive, horned forms in the area. _Or there's more than one of them,_ Vincent had said. _Four_ king behemoths loose at the foot of Midgar. And my mission was to stop them. Objective confirmed. I adjusted my grip on Masamune's hilt. 

"I'll take the farthest first!" I called to Vincent. "Keep the other two from advancing!" If we could get them boxed in between us, we should be able to keep them from moving on anything else. 

"Right." The ex-Turk was swapping magazines as I ran past, his motions quick and practiced. A steady rate of fire started up behind me as I dodged past the first king behemoth, then vaulted over the second's head. There was an explosion of superheated air behind me as one of them invoked a Flare spell, but I didn't have time to turn and see whether or not Vincent had been hit, and the reassuring sound of his gun starting up again told me that if he had, it hadn't been serious. 

" _Wark!_ " 

A wild chocobo with terrible timing, apparently. There were enough of them loose in the plains lands around Kalm that I doubted one would be a significant loss to the ecosystem. I ignored it. 

Until the monster nearest Vincent swatted it with an extended paw, and a smaller form went flying away from the chocobo, tumbling and screaming. 

In an instant, my brain registered _civilian_ and _not good_ and _too far_ . . . and I was already in motion, jumping back over the second king behemoth and running forward to snatch the tumbling form right-handed from the air, feeling the heat of another Flare against my back. A small person, young, easy for me to fold my body around to protect them from the blast, all the while damning duty and what passed for my sense of ethics. 

Loud noises from very nearby. Vincent was between us and the charging monsters. Slow they might be, but there was no way a civilian would be able to run fast enough to avoid them. However, Vincent alone couldn't take all three of these, and I couldn't both fight and protect something as fragile as a normal human. 

Something raged inside me as I understood that I might have to give this unknown person up as collateral damage. Hojo's plan, no doubt. _Your purpose isn't to save. Your purpose is to cleanse the world of lesser life._ Things he'd said to me sometimes in the middle of the night, when we were alone. I'd half-forgotten, until Jenova had echoed the words back at me in Nibelheim. 

Given the source of the advice, I was inclined to oppose it. Violently. 

I pushed the stranger behind me and took up the familiar high guard stance with Masamune. When the first king behemoth poked its nose in, I threw a Fire spell directly at its eyes. It cringed back instinctively even though the heat and light could do it no actual damage, opening its mouth to roar, and I lunged forward to pierce the exposed roof of its mouth. Vincent was shoulder-to-shoulder with me, shooting another one in the eye. His last bullet, but this time, when he went to change the magazine, he came up empty. A quick, horrified widening of his eyes, and I went on the offensive, fast and furious. There were two people I needed to protect now, and I had to do it alone. Cut at questing paws and noses and— _faster and faster and faster_ —how long was it going to take for one of these damnable creatures to bleed to death? Too long— 

A tail whipped in, and I leaned sideways, but it had never been aimed at me. 

_Vincent!_

He skidded, bouncing along the ground, and there was a trembling in the air and— 

Vincent was no longer there. 

The creature that rose in his place had broad red wings, horns, and purple skin several shades darker than a normal behemoth would have been. Its eyes were feral, and it flung its head back and roared, making the king behemoths cringe. It struck some chord inside me as well, a primeval harbinger of doom . . . and why was I suddenly channeling Genesis? 

_I have a Summon materia implanted in my body_ , Vincent had said. _Under circumstances of injury or extreme stress, I transform into the creature the materia was meant to summon._ And he'd also said he had no control over it. Right now, though, it seemed to be most interested in the monsters, wading straight into the nearest one and slashing at it with extended claws. I took advantage of the distraction to pith the brain of the one whose eye Vincent had shot out, and the other was badly battered. One more blow took a front paw right off, and it began to bleed heavily. 

The . . . creature . . . had finished with its own opponent, and landed on top of the now three-legged monster in front of me, taloned hands digging into the back of the neck. I saw the moment the king behemoth's spine snapped, leaving it paralyzed and helpless on the ground. I cut through the thick muscles of the throat to the carotid artery, to speed its dying and reduce the chances of it casting one final Flare, then stopped as I felt the gentle breeze from a wing ruffle my hair. 

The Vincent-creature had landed right beside me, well within the arc of Masamune's swing. I didn't lower my sword. There was no way of telling whether or not this thing would suddenly decide I was an enemy and move in for an attack. 

It looked at me for a moment. Considering me, I thought. Then it smirked in a way I couldn't possibly associate with Vincent, and reached out slowly towards my face. 

I stared at it impassively as the knuckle of a taloned finger traced the line of my jaw. Not an attack, but I couldn't understand what in hell it was trying to do, touching me thus, then placing the pad of its thumb against my lips. I could feel the talon now, not pressing quite hard enough to pierce my enhancement-toughened skin. Given how little I like being touched, it should have bothered me more, but this in no way resembled the abuse I'd suffered in the labs as a child. This was . . . something other. 

It lowered its hand then, and seemed to draw in on itself, becoming a rough ball shielded by wings . . . becoming Vincent, thrown down on his hands and knees on the ground, struggling to catch his breath. 

He looked up at me and winced. I offered him my free hand, blood-slimed though it was, and after a moment's hesitation, he reached up to take it. I helped pull him to his feet, and he stood gripping my forearm and blowing hard for a moment before letting go. 

"I'm sorry," he said. 

I shrugged, and shook the blood from Masamune before sheathing her. "We'll need to get you a more reliable supply of ammunition, it seems. Does the transformation function as a Limit Break?" Something that I'd never experienced myself. Apparently I was incapable of entering that peculiar transcendant state that made impossible feats seem easy. Or perhaps I'd just never needed it. 

"More or less. My original Limit was . . . milder. A general heightening of my physical abilities." Vincent seemed incapable of meeting my eyes, which was . . . unexpected. From the first, the red-eyed man had always looked straight at me. "There are four of them, actually. The creatures. The weaker ones are more controllable, but that one—Chaos—has a definite mind of its own." 

"Human-level intelligence?" It certainly hadn't behaved like an animal. 

Vincent nodded. "It's capable of speech, although it seldom bothers." 

"And did it bother this time?" I asked softly, because his agitation was so obvious and it had only started after he'd reverted from being that creature. I hadn't heard it speak, but if it had done so while we were still fighting the behemoths, the noise might have drowned it out. Or perhaps it was capable of speaking directly into his mind, as Jenova had done with me. 

"Yes." Just the single syllable, spoken through clenched teeth. 

"What did it say?" What could it _possibly_ have said, to make the normally unflappable ex-Turk behave like this? 

"It was trying to put me off-balance so that I wouldn't be able to regain control. The exact words aren't important." But he still wouldn't look at me. 

I reached out and gripped his chin, forcing his head up. He didn't try to stop me, or to say anything. Guilt and shame were what I saw in his eyes, although I was far from an expert at distinguishing such things. 

I let him go again, even though I knew that the lack of an answer would hang there at the back of my mind until the matter was resolved, a tiny torment like a grain of sand somehow making its way into one of my boots. To my knowledge, Vincent had done nothing here that anyone could use to shame him. Regardless, a civilian had stumbled into the middle of our fight, and we had left them unattended for far too long already. 

It turned out that "they" were in fact a "her". More than that, I knew the girl who was lying unconscious on the ground, just out of range of the pools of behemoth blood. 

"Tifa Lockheart," I said thoughtfully. 

"The girl from Nibelheim," Vincent agreed. "The question is, why is she here?" 

"I suppose we'll have to ask her." I bent and checked her for broken bones, or cranial or spinal injuries. Finding nothing, I invoked the Restore materia I wore on my wrist and watched her visible bruises fade. 

She would have to be seen to by a doctor, to ensure her unconsciousness wasn't caused by some more subtle damage that I'd missed. Time enough to question her when she woke up. 

Perhaps by then I'd have Vincent's secret drawn out of him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Cloud**

The top bunk was empty when I woke up properly. Did I really remember Sephiroth coming to the door last night? Those green eyes couldn't really be mistaken for anyone else's, but I'd been more than half asleep . . . 

The alarm clock made another startled-chocobo sound, and I slapped its off-button. It had been a gag gift from Zack (of course—who else did I know who cared enough to give me any kind of gifts at all? Besides Mom, that was) and it had a little chocobo head sticking out of one end and a tail at the other. Vincent had raised an eyebrow when I'd set it out the night before, but he hadn't said anything. It was actually kind of nice, rooming with someone who knew how to keep his mouth shut instead of five other troopers from Company 6. 

Right. My schedule this morning was _breakfast_ , and then _report to Major Fair's office at 8:00AM_. And it was after seven. Better get my butt in gear, or I'd be late. Zack might not care, but his office shared a wall and a secretary with Sephiroth's, and there was no question about the General not caring. Wherever Vincent was, he'd just have to take care of himself—and between the zu and his "sparring session" with Zack yesterday, I figured he could handle that pretty well. 

So I had my breakfast, and went to Zack's office like I'd been told to do . . . and found Vincent, Zack, and the General all in the one next door, with none of them looking like they'd slept very much. 

"Strife." I don't know if it was Sephiroth who noticed me first, but he was the first one to say anything. "Get coffee for all of us, then come in and close the door." 

"Yes, sir." There wasn't much else I could say. I went to the coffee maker in the outer office. Someone had started it already, so all I had to do was pour the cups and arrange them on a tray with some sugar and actual cream—none of that non-dairy creamer garbage for the General. Although Zack had told me that the man had so little interest in food that he ate ration bars half the time. 

And then I went into the office and closed the door, and things started to get serious. Sephiroth was sitting behind the desk, Vincent was sitting in front of it, Zack was standing by the side, and I was going to have to stand too, unless I wanted to get up on somebody's lap. And I wasn't feeling suicidal, so I just set the coffee in the middle and planted myself beside Zack. I also waited for them to each pick a mug before I took the last one. 

The Sephiroth started talking, and I nearly dropped the coffee. "First point: At four-thirty this morning, I was woken by an emergency call regarding a behemoth on the rampage just outside the city walls. Since you weren't available, Zack, I took Vincent with me." Zack started to say something, but Sephiroth quelled him with a withering glare. "I don't particularly care where you actually were—I stated in my report that you'd probably been unable to sleep, gone to the training rooms, and left your PHS behind. What we found out there was somewhat more important. Not one behemoth, but four _king_ behemoths, which are not normally found on this continent." 

"That . . . doesn't sound good," Zack said slowly, "but you guys took care of it, right?" 

"Of that incursion, yes, but I suspect we may be seeing more in the near future. This has Hojo's fingerprints all over it. I need you to draw up a rotation that has two squads on call at all times, with one of us—" Sephiroth's hand indicated himself and Zack. "—as emergency back-up." 

"Got it." Zack didn't look very thrilled, but his tone was serious. "Twelve on, twelve off, ugh," he added. 

"If it makes you feel better, you can give me the night shift," the General said, and Zack made an agreeing kind of gesture. 

Okay, so now I understood everything except why they were involving a Cloud Strife in this, but I wasn't quite brave enough to speak up and ask. 

"Second point," Sephiroth continued. "There was a civilian present at the fight. She ended up unconscious, and we have no idea what she was doing there—both in that specific location, and on the plains between Midgar and Kalm. It isn't where I would have expected to find someone from Nibelheim." 

I almost sprayed coffee all over the General's office. Well, at least that _did_ explain why I was here, but . . . 

"Strife," General Sephiroth said, and suddenly everyone was looking at me. "What can you tell us about Tifa Lockheart? What motive might she have for leaving her home and coming to this continent?" 

_Tifa?_ "Tifa Lockheart's father is the mayor of Nibelheim," I said, trying to give myself time to think. "Her mother's dead. She's a year younger than I am. We were slightly acquainted, but not close. She studies martial arts—her father doesn't really approve, but he can't refuse her anything she wants, either. Unless it's something to do with that, I don't know why she'd leave Nibelheim." 

"'Slightly acquainted'," Vincent said. "Interesting. Why would she have taken the risk of asking General Sephiroth about you if your contact was only on that level?" 

"I don't know," I said, and caught the _sir_ and bit it back just barely in time. Vincent was either the same rank as me or a civilian, _and_ he was my roommate . . . but he was also a lot older than me, and he was at ease around people like Sephiroth in a way that I couldn't manage. "We talked a bit the night I left Nibelheim, but I'd never have expected that she even remembered." I wasn't going to tell them that she had been my first crush—there were limits. 

"After she asked me about you, she said, 'Congratulations, Cloud—you really did it! I guess it's my turn now,' as though talking to herself," Sephiroth said. "I doubt she intended us to overhear." But she hadn't known about enhanced SOLDIER hearing, right. 

I shook my head. "That still doesn't help. Other than the fact that she may have been planning this for a while." 

"Find out," the General said. "She's in Medical under supervision, until she regains consciousness and they're certain there aren't any lasting consequences from what happened to her." 

"Yes, sir." 

"One other thing. It's a bit premature, but Zack, have our Third Class draw a sword from the armoury. If things come to a head sooner than I expect, I don't want him to be unprepared." 

Usually you didn't get your own sword, even standard issue, until after your second mako treatment—I'd asked Dane yesterday, since he was as approachable as Zack and had a lot more time to answer questions from a beginner Third Class. I wasn't sure whether I should be proud or scared. That had been happening a lot since the General had started taking an interest in me. 

"Third point," Sephiroth was saying. I blinked. _There's more?_ "I realized during that fight that certain things Doctor Hojo has said to me in the past were word-for-word identical with some of the things Jenova said while she was attacking my mind in Nibelheim. That implies the existence of some channel of communication between them. I have no idea how complete it was, which direction it ran in, or why Hojo was surprised when Zack and I told him that we'd cleaned out the reactor in Nibelheim." 

"Maybe it's short-distance?" I offered, and Sephiroth looked at me. I stared back at him, full in his eerie green mako eyes, and a little smile curled the corner of his mouth upwards for half a second. 

"Perhaps so, Strife. I would prefer that to the other possibility." 

"That we might have missed something," Zack said. "But that's one of the reasons we need those records, isn't it?" 

Sephiroth nodded. "How are our preparations going?" he asked, shifting his attention to Vincent. 

"I'll speak to Veld today." 

"Very well. Does anyone have anything else to add?" 

Zack shook his head. Vincent shrugged. And I looked down into my coffee. Even if I'd had anything to say, I wasn't sure I would have dared to bring it up. 

"Good. Dismissed." 

I followed Zack out, and over to his office, since that was where I had been supposed to report to in the first place. Zack ruffled my hair as I closed the door. 

"You did good, Spike." 

"Did I?" My coffee had fallen from hot to just warm while we'd been talking, but I sipped at it anyway, because it gave me something to do that wasn't obviously fidgeting. 

"You stuck to business, didn't get tongue-tied or blurt out anything stupid, and managed to speak up without being disrespectful. Seph has way too many idiots around him, and he doesn't appreciate the type." 

I shrugged. "I just treated him like any other officer." That I respected, anyway. 

"Most people don't. They freak out and do the 'Oh wow, it's General Sephiroth!' dance." 

"Zack, this isn't the first time I've met him. Don't you think that if I were going to do something that stupid, I would have done it in Nibelheim?" 

"Some people have delayed reactions." Zack's expression said that he was honestly worried, but I didn't really think it was because he'd thought I would do something stupid. So maybe the whole Nibelheim-Sephiroth-Jenova business had scared him, or maybe it had been following Sephiroth on his visit to the Science Department yesterday. Or a bit of both. 

I rolled my eyes. "Of all the people to be a mama chocobo about . . ." 

"He's fragile in some weird ways, Cloud." 

"I dare you to say that to his face." 

Zack shuddered. "No thank you. Masamune's never looked all that tasty to me, so I'd rather not end up eating it. Speaking of which, we'd better go get you a sword—Medical won't be open to visitors until nine o'clock, so this would be a good time." 

"You don't have to come with me." Zack had duties, I knew. And paperwork. There was some sitting on his desk right now, in messy, overhanging piles. 

"Give me a break, Spiky . . . or more accurately, I'm trying to give _myself_ one. It isn't like the papers are going to try to run away and join a Wutainese resistance group if I'm not here to watch them every second. So finish your coffee, and let's go." 

I was a little disappointed when we got to the armoury and discovered that almost all of the swords racked along the walls were of the same model, just graduated by length and weight. Picking out my first sword was just a matter of trying the lighter blades until I found one that balanced nicely and didn't seem too short—about the same length as Zack's Buster Sword, but narrower. 

"Careful there, Spike, or someone's going to think you're compensating for something," Zack teased. 

"I thought that was _you_ ," I retorted. I was blushing, I knew I was, but I wasn't going to let Zack get the better of me, either. "After all, they say that it's _big_ guys who usually turn out to be . . . disappointing, that way. Of course, maybe Aerith doesn't mind. Maybe I'll ask her." 

"You wouldn't," Zack said, but I caught the least bit of pink spreading across his face, too. 

Anyway, when I went down to Medical, I had a brand-new sword slung across my back and banging against my legs as I walked. It didn't take me long to realize that just doing normal, everyday things while wearing four-plus feet of rigid mako-annealed steel was a special skill that I was going to have to learn if I wanted to stay in SOLDIER. Maybe that was why Sephiroth had wanted me to get a sword this early—so that I could learn how to handle it. 

I didn't _quite_ knock the feet out from under the secretary who shared the elevator with me, and I didn't get hooked on any of the doors after Zack helped me get out of the armoury, but I had to think about every movement, and it was hard enough that I almost envied Vincent his gun. But this was what I'd wanted—to be a SOLDIER like Sephiroth, and I wasn't going to give up now that I'd already crossed the finish line. Especially not over something this stupid. 

I squared my shoulders as I exited the elevator and went to the nursing station. It took a moment for me to get the nurse's attention. Even a Third Class uniform didn't quite make up for me being too damned short. 

"General Sephiroth asked me to check on a Tifa Lockheart," I said firmly. "She was brought in early this morning." 

"The girl with the fighting gloves? Room 12-G," the nurse told me. 

"Thank you." 

12-G was down a hall and through a fire door (lead with the shoulder that has the hilt poking up over it and twist a bit to the side to keep the other end from getting caught against the door as it shuts, that's right, Cloud). All of the rooms had six beds in them, but only the one on the far left was occupied here, by someone short and dark-haired who was looking out the window. 

"Tifa?" 

She turned to face me, and . . . well . . . I kind of hadn't noticed how Tifa had grown when I saw her again in Nibelheim, because I'd been trying so hard to keep her from realizing it was me. Grown _out_ , that is, not _up_. Although I guess she'd grown _up_ , too . . . 

I bit the tip of my tongue, because I knew that this was not the time to start babbling. I wasn't just here to visit an old friend, I was on a mission for the General. I mean, if _Zack_ had sent me here, it might just have been an excuse, but I was pretty sure Sephiroth didn't think like that. It probably came of having no hometown or family or old friends of his own. 

When Tifa smiled, her whole face lit up. "Cloud! So what General Sephiroth said was true—you really did make it into SOLDIER!" She threw her blankets back. 

"I'm just a Third Class," I said. "And you shouldn't get out of bed." 

"I'm _fine_. I don't even know why I'm in here. Or what happened to my chocobo—and after I went to so much trouble to catch it, too." 

"You don't remember the behemoths?" 

Tifa blinked and rubbed her forehead. " _Oh_. I do now—the big things with the horns? One of them . . . hit the chocobo, and . . . General Sephiroth was there, and he grabbed me out of the air and shielded me from that spell and . . . I fell over when he pushed me behind him and hit my head on the ground. I guess he must have gotten all the monsters, right?" 

"He's good at that. Tifa, what are you doing in Midgar? Zack said he'd met you in Nibelheim, and he's only been back for a couple of days." _Just pretend there's no mission, Cloud. And don't forget to breathe._

"I didn't want to stay in Nibelheim any more than you did. Dad was starting to talk about me getting married. At _fifteen_." 

I blinked. "To _who_?" 

"I'm not sure he cared. He has some pretty old-fashioned ideas about what's supposed to make a girl happy." Tifa shook her head. "Three months of _that_ , and I was just about climbing the walls. So when a plane came over from Rocket Town on a test, just a few hours after the General and the other people from Shinra left, I stowed away on it, and it ended up taking me all the way to Kalm! Then I started walking. I figured maybe I could sleep on your couch or something until I figured out what to do next." 

"Tifa, I share a room with another guy. And we don't have a couch, or space for another person. And that's even if they'd let you stay at the tower, which they probably won't . . ." I caught the look on her face. "You're not going back, are you?" 

"Not a chance." 

"Okay, let me think." Did I know anyone in Midgar who had a family? Any girls at all? ". . . Aerith." 

"What?" 

"Zack's girlfriend. She's really nice. Maybe she'd let you crash at her place . . . It's in the slums, though." As far as I knew, anyway. She'd mentioned a house. 

"Slums?" 

I sighed. Explaining The Facts of Life in Midgar to Tifa was probably going to take a while.


	13. Chapter 13

**Vincent**

_«He's an excellent choice.»_

_For what?_

_«A mate. I have to admit, I was worried back when you were lavishing all that attention on that sickly female. I didn't think you would ever show an interest in anyone worthy, but this one is only a hair short of being a true Immortalis. A perfect partner for us both.»_

_Don't be disgusting, Chaos. I am not interested in having that kind of relationship with Sephiroth._

_«Vincent. Dear host of mine. You can lie to yourself, but do you really think you can lie to_ me _?»_

That was when Chaos had ceded my body back to me, after touching Sephiroth's face and forcing me to feel the silken perfection of the man's skin. Making even more of a hash of my state of mind, because I _should not_ have been touching Lucrecia's son like that. 

It was part of the reason I hated Chaos so much. On the rare occasions that it woke up, the creature seemed to make almost a hobby of trying to disrupt my mental state. It had gotten better at it over the years, although I had also gotten better at resisting. 

_I should have stayed in the coffin,_ I thought. Not for the first time. However, I was here in Midgar now, and committed to a course of action. I would not abandon Sephiroth now. 

What did a creature with wings and horns and no genitalia know about romantic and sexual behaviour in humans, anyway? It might have thought that anyone I spent substantial amounts of time with was a potential "mate". I should probably be glad it wasn't trying to pair me with Cloud. And what in hell was an Immortalis? Chaos occasionally hit on concepts that had no analogue in my experience, and it never explained. 

I had a more immediate concern than Chaos' torture, however, and that was my ammunition supply, or lack thereof. Sephiroth didn't have the authority to grant access to the armouries used by the Turks or the infantry, and while a note from him _might_ still have gotten me past someone from the regular army, I'd decided to try Veld first. 

When I entered the Turks' offices, Reno immediately appeared from the lounge, cup of coffee in one hand. 

"Yo, Vince," he said, with a casual wave. 

"Vincent," I corrected. I had always hated nicknames. 

"If you're here to see the big man, you're going to have to wait a bit—Scarlet dropped by. She's probably trying to convince him we should field-test one of her toys. Again." 

Scarlet. Head of Weapons Development, from the skeletal outline of Shinra's current executive that Sephiroth had given me. I didn't remember her, so she had likely joined the company . . . after my time. 

"Wasn't sure last time," Reno continued, "but that really is a Quicksilver you've got there, isn't it? An old one. They haven't issued those in more than ten years, and never to SOLDIER. Where the hell did you get it?" 

"I can't remember." Which was true. It wasn't my gun, and I had no idea why I'd taken it into the coffin with me. My memories of that period were confused, a knot of fear and guilt and Chaos' taunting and all the other voices in my head. "It serves its purpose well enough," I added, to avoid letting the pause draw out too long. Reno would have been trained to spot things like that. 

Reno grinned. "So I hear. Not something I'd want to use against a behemoth, though. Or even a zu." 

"It would be equally difficult to work a behemoth over with a shock stick," I said, and the red-head laughed. 

"True enough. Which is why I'm glad it was you and not me who got to help the Gen'ral play tag with them. I don't get why you're working for everyone's favourite ice sculpture, though, instead of with us—or are you like nearly all the girls and half the other guys around here, looking to get into those tight leather pants?" 

I wasn't sure what my face looked like, but I must have given something away, because Reno's grin had turned smug. Damn Chaos. 

"Hah—I'll bet you are. Doesn't work, though. I've been watching people try for a couple of years now—gave up myself early on when he wouldn't get a hint. He ignores everyone who comes on to him. Sexless as that sword of his. So if you're stuck on him, why don't I help get you unstuck, if y'know what I mean?" 

I stared at him. Now, _that_ was an offer I hadn't been expecting. Granted, the age gap between us wasn't obvious just by looking, but we were near-total strangers. 

That didn't mean it was an unattractive offer. I'd had relationships with a few other Turks back when I still worked here—casual relationships for mutual relief, where both parties understood that neither could be open with the other, and one of us might have to drop out at any time, due to long-term assignment, injury, or death. But . . . 

"Oh, sorry, didn't think. If you're straight except for a slight curve right near Gen'ral Iceberg's fine ass, then just forget I ever said anything, okay?" 

"That isn't the problem. I don't sleep with people who are intent on ferreting out my secrets, that's all." I had so many these days that were more important than the top-secret-classified Shinra garbage the Turks had jurisdiction over, and many of them weren't even mine. And I was just a little worried about what my indwellers would do if I chose to be intimate with someone, I had to admit. I wouldn't put it past Chaos to try to take over at the moment of orgasm, while my mind was completely elsewhere. 

"Too bad—you're almost as good-looking as your boss, in your own way. Just a lot easier to miss, 'cause you don't project your presence the way he does." 

I blinked at him, because he'd surprised me again. "You just have a weakness for tall men with mako eyes." 

"And an interest in banging everything that moves." Reno ruined his solemn tone with a grin as the sound of someone walking in high heels became audible from the inner offices. "And I'd bet that's Scarlet right now, so the Old Man should finally be free. He did say he wanted to see you if you stopped by, so you can go right in. Just don't open any doors that aren't his." 

I nodded, and approached the door to the inner offices. Before I could turn the handle, a hard-faced blonde woman in a red dress pushed it open from the inside. She had not one, but two guns hidden under her skirt, I noted, one strapped to each thigh. Presumably this was Scarlet. She barely looked at me on her way past, and hopefully she wouldn't recognize me if she spotted me in Sephiroth's vicinity in the future. 

Veld, in his office at the end of the hall, was rubbing his forehead as though Scarlet had given him a class-one migraine. 

"Need a Cure?" I asked as I stepped inside. 

"No, I need that woman's dossier, so that I can figure out the best time and place to shoot her. Hello, Vincent. Close the door, would you?" 

I found myself half-smiling as I pulled it shut, because that was the Veld I remembered from the old days. 

"Sephiroth was asking how far along we are with the plan," I said. 

"Halfway? I'm not sure myself. We've got Serpent Throne—that's the biggest of the Wutai groups—really interested, plus some smaller ones like the Katana Alliance, but I was hoping to rope in AVALANCHE, and we haven't had much luck on that front so far. Another two weeks, maybe, unless one of you has some ideas." 

"Not my area," I said. Which was true. 

"I know. You may be perceptive, but persuasive? Not a chance." 

He was right about that, too. 

"I have something for you," my ex-partner added, tilting his head back. "Just give me a moment. Ugh, the way that woman _screeches_ . . ." He rubbed the center of his forehead a few more times before straightening up and reaching for a desk drawer. "I'd half-forgotten I had this. When you . . . When your personal effects were shipped back from Nibelheim, I kept it to remember you by. Didn't figure your next-of-kin—sister, or whatever it was you put on the form—would have any need for it. But it should go back to you now." 

Veld pulled out a familiar box and set it in the open space at the center of his desk, and I reached out and ran my good hand over it, feeling every dent in the black-painted metal. I still remembered how most of them had gotten there. He'd left the key in the lock, and I turned it, then opened the lid. 

I lifted Cerberus gently from his resting place and broke him open to check his condition and make sure he wasn't loaded, then closed him up with a flick of my wrist and dry-fired him at the floor. The trigger seemed less stiff than I remembered, but that was as likely as not to be the enhancements Hojo had forced on me. In any case, Veld had looked after my old gun well. Obsessively, even, from the way the metal shone. 

"I'm going to need some bullets," I said. Cerberus took a different, heavier caliber than the Quicksilver, even if I'd had anything left for it. And, "Thank you." 

"Don't mention it. And I've already coded 'Vincent Gunner''s ID into our armoury lock. It's in the same place as it was in the old building. Help yourself to whatever you need. That isn't the only thing I wanted to give you, though." He reached into the desk again, and pulled out several thick files. I put Cerberus aside for the time being so that I could pick them up and read the labels. _Hojo. Hollander. Project G. Genesis Rhapsodos. Angeal Hewley. Zack Fair. Sephiroth. Project S_ —that one was rather thin. 

"Have you given the General my file?" I asked, with some degree of bemusement, as I leafed through the _Sephiroth_ folder. No information on his origins, and his connection to Hojo was downplayed. He kept annoying them by finding bugs left in his quarters and office and destroying them. Some notes on potential methods of applying leverage—currently, they thought their best chance was through Zack. Other notes concerned his physical qualities and possible methods of takedown. The last page in that series bore a summary: _Subject has rapid self-healing, augmented senses, and an incredible capacity for violence. Any attempt will cost us agents, and may lead to the wholesale slaughter of the entire department if he survives and discovers who's responsible, which is quite likely. Conclusion: Don't try it._

"I don't think it's occurred to him to ask." 

"If he does, give it to him. Unredacted." 

"Are you sure?" 

I shrugged. "He already knows I was a sniper. I doubt the identities of my targets will be of much interest to him, given that they all died before he was born. Regarding the more personal matters, I have nothing to hide from him." Sephiroth already knew the shameful worst about my adult life, and I doubted he would care very much about my childhood or my family. 

Veld shook his head. "I don't get it. You were never one to make friends easily. Why him, Vincent? Why Sephiroth?" 

_Because you want him,_ Chaos whispered as he slithered just below the level of my consciousness. 

_Shut up._ "He and I have certain things in common," I said aloud. "One of which is Hojo, unfortunately." 

"Shared suffering, is that it? I don't believe you for a minute, but let it go for now. I can't let those files out of this section, by the way, but you can use the office that matches your old one." 

"Thanks." 

It was really just an empty space with a desk in it, near the end of the hall. Even the carpet wasn't the same—the one in the old building had looked like it was blotched with green mold, while the new one was more grey. The desk was dusty, and the keycard scanner buzzed irritably when I opened the door. There was no sign anyone had ever used the room. 

I dropped the folders in a pile in the middle of the desk, with Cerberus' box on top, and contemplated the pile for a moment. _Armoury first,_ I decided. 

Cerberus' holster, as lovingly maintained as the gun, was designed to strap to my thigh rather than fasten to my belt. I frowned as I had to pull the buckles a hole tighter than had been the case the last time I'd worn it, despite the extra bulk of the loose trousers that came with the SOLDIER uniform. I hadn't entirely realized until now just how much weight I'd lost. I shifted the old Quicksilver to the small of my back so that they wouldn't knock together, and tested pulling both of them out. They came easily, which was good, but it annoyed me that I could only use one of them at a time. The damnable claw just wasn't flexible enough to pull a trigger properly, but I wasn't ready to find out what was underneath it. I knew I'd lost part of the hand, trying to block Hojo's second shot, but I could also feel fingers that I knew had been blown off pressing against the metal from the inside. 

Hojo had probably grafted something to me to replace the missing parts. What, I wasn't sure. I doubted it was pretty, though. Or human. _Don't think about that,_ I told myself. 

The armoury was at the opposite end of the hall from Veld's office, unmarked and looking, from the outside, like another vacant room. As Veld had said, my keycard opened it and let me into the cramped space beyond. 

Close-combat weapons to the right, ammunition to the left. Guns and accessories for them further in, opposite the body armour, but I didn't need another pistol right now, and drawing one of the sniper rifles would be difficult to explain to anyone who didn't know my history. Materia at the very back in a locked cabinet, but I wasn't about to presume on Veld's generosity. I took the two boxes of ammunition that I needed, and a cleaning kit—I couldn't keep borrowing Strife's, especially when he'd moved on to a different weapon—and left the room again, letting the door fall shut behind me. 

I reloaded the Quicksilver and its spare clips immediately, then sat down at the desk and began to take Cerberus apart for a thorough inspection. I trusted Veld, but I doubted he had ever used the gun while Cerberus had been in his possession, and I had the time to do this right now, when I might not later. 

I was in the process of putting the pieces back together again when Reno walked past the open door, paused, and came into the derelict office. Unfortunately, I couldn't both watch him and continue assembling my gun—in the old days, I could have done it on reflex, but the claw kept getting in the way. 

"'Helger and Sons'," Reno read, tracing the lettering on Cerberus' battered box with a finger, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. "If that cannon you're playing with really belongs with that box, then it's worth a good hundred thou. Helger's went out of business a few years ago when the last of the sons died, but there's still no better gunsmith out there. How did you get Veld to give you that thing?" 

"He was holding it for me." Which was more than I perhaps should have said, but I knew Reno's type. He'd keep prodding and poking until he got some kind of answer. I deliberately looked down, fitting the last couple of pieces into place, then breaking Cerberus open and beginning to load him. 

Eighteen bullets later, Reno was still there. 

"I've got a theory," the red-head said, leaning against the dusty desk. "The big man doesn't normally let random strangers into our space or give them access to classified files, even if they're friends of his, y'know? So I figure you must have been one of us at some point. In training, at least. And then they picked you when they needed someone to test out the SOLDIER treatments, back around the time the war started with Wutai, and they made you disappear but good, 'cause I can't find any records at all, and believe me, I've been looking." 

There was a long pause as I snapped Cerberus shut again and returned him to his holster. 

"The only thing I don't get is, why this office? Unless it belonged to your mentor or something. I don't remember anyone ever actually using this one." 

I picked up the _Hojo_ file and began to leaf through. "Apply to Veld if you want the answer to that one." 

"Okay, fine, we'll leave it at that for now. See you around, Vince." 

I shook my head as Reno waved and swept out of the room. I knew better to think of this as anything but a brief reprieve. He was going to keep prying . . . but hopefully he wouldn't get the idea of going through the old personnel files one by one for at least a couple of weeks. By then, Hojo should be dealt with. Once he was gone, it wouldn't matter if anyone recognized Vincent Valentine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the FFVII-original version of Chaos, not the Dirge one, in case anyone's confused by the description. (This guy: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/b/b3/FFVII-Chaos.png/revision/latest?cb=20120415152319 )
> 
> Yup, Chaos totally ships them. ;)
> 
> And Reno is a cheerfully promiscuous pansexual. Because it just seemed to fit.


	14. Chapter 14

**Zack**

I opened the door to Seph's office without knocking, 'cause I like living dangerously. 

"Zack. Don't do that." Seph let Masamune drop back the half-inch or so needed to seat it firmly on the stand beside his desk, and let go of the hilt. 

"Give me a break. You knew it was me." 

"Some day I might be so distracted that I lash out before I identify you." 

"Hasn't happened yet," I pointed out, closing the door behind me. "Okay, couple of things I wanted to cover. First is, I told your secretary to fetch a proper supper up from the cafeteria for you right before she goes off-duty, and you're going to eat it and not one of those ration bars, understand?" 

A silver eyebrow rose. "The ration bars contain optimally balanced nutrition for someone with the metabolism of a SOLDIER. I never have understood why you think I shouldn't eat them." 

I rolled my eyes. "Because they taste like something scraped out of the bottom of a chocobo stall. _I've_ never understood why you don't care about that. It's one of the things that makes people think you're not really human—" My eyes widened, and I bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood. "Oh, shit, Seph, I'm sorry. I didn't think." 

"You often don't. I've grown somewhat accustomed to you occasionally wedging one of your boots in your mouth . . . and that particular accusation is one I've heard many times before. In addition to it being somewhat truthful. Or at least, I've never met another 'human' whose pupils are vertical slits." 

It worried me worse when he was just able to roll with something like that. It was a reminder that he didn't really confide in anyone, and that his life had been hell in ways that I wasn't equipped to understand. 

"What was the other thing you wanted to talk about?" he asked now, while I was still trying to figure out whether it was worth apologizing again. Probably not. It was more likely to make him mad than it was to help. 

"Cloud." I went over and sat down on the corner of his desk—I'd left the Buster Sword in my office, so it wasn't there to get in the way. "It's been a couple of days now, and he still doesn't belong to a unit, or have any duties except training and playing office gopher for the two of us. Don't you think we're kind of . . . I don't know, short-changing him?" 

"By not reacquainting him with the more tedious and unpleasant parts of life in the military?" Sephiroth asked, and I could tell from the way the corners of his mouth twitched that he was amused. 

"It's something we all sign up for. And he's already singled out because he was a special promotion, rather than coming up through the exams like everyone else. I've already had to break up one round of bullshit involving him. We need to slot him in properly somehow, or he's going to end up as isolated as . . . well, _you_." Angeal would have found a better way to say it, I knew. He'd been good at this stuff. There was a reason they'd called him the heart of SOLDIER. The best I could do was fumble around, trying to keep his legacy from falling apart completely. 

Seph shrugged. "There are no vacancies at the moment. I'll probably end up rotating him here and there as a temporary replacement whenever we need one, the way Angeal did with you, until the new cohort comes through next year." 

Assuming at least one of us was still alive and with Shinra by then, he meant. "Or we could just make it official that he's a special case. I know the mentor system doesn't get used very often, but I'm senior enough now to train someone. And we could still rotate him into whatever openings come up." 

Seph looked thoughtful. "Approved, with one change. I'll take him on myself." 

I went as goggle-eyed as a touch-me frog. "Um, Seph . . . are you sure you're feeling okay? You've been refusing to take a student since before I met you, and now you want the skinny guy with the chocobo hair?" 

"I thought you liked Strife," Seph said, raising an eyebrow. 

"I do, but he isn't . . . he's not . . ." I waved my hands around a bit, trying to come up with the words. "Everyone's been expecting that if you ever took a student, they would be something . . . spectacular, I guess. And Cloud . . . he tries really hard, but he's _average_." 

"Is that what you think? You haven't been observing him that closely, then. His coordination and dexterity—which are _not_ , if you will recall, things that can be improved by enhancement—are exceptional, and his mako absorption limit is higher than yours. Given enough time, my belief is that he will mature into an impressive fighter. Possibly not an impressive _officer_ , but then Genesis wasn't that either . . . and Strife may yet surprise us in that domain as well." 

I was doing my touch-me imitation again before he was halfway through. Seph was right: I hadn't given it that much thought. I'd only considered _half_ of what it meant to do right by Cloud. 

"Furthermore, we need to consider the tactical aspect of this," Seph was saying. "If you take a student, no one will be particularly surprised. If _I_ take one, everyone with an interest in me will be thinking about that, and not about what else I may be doing. That could work to our advantage." 

"Are you sure that's not more important in your mind than Cloud's best good?" I challenged. "You're a natural at so many things that you're going to be a horrible teacher—unable to understand why your student can't get things right the first time, the way you always did." 

Seph's familiar tiny smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "Which is why I intend to delegate as much as possible. To you, mostly. Handing him over to Dane Miller for basic sword training borders on the inspired." 

"So this is almost-but-not-quite in name only." 

"Yes. I intend to file the papers tonight, unless you have any further objections." 

"Not a one, but . . . do you mind if I take him monster hunting with me tonight? Just in the slums. They're having a problem with hedgehog pies again, and I thought it might be a good way for Cloud to get started using a sword in real combat." We'd already intended to go down there because of Tifa, which was why I was leaving Seph's secretary to bring him his supper instead of doing it myself. 

"Hedgehog pies." Sephiroth shook his head. "Very well. Have him draw some materia and a wristlet before you leave." 

"Right. Thanks, sir. Don't forget you promised me you'd eat a proper supper." 

"I didn't, actually." 

Damn, he was right. "Let me try again: You'd _better_ eat what that poor woman brings you, or I'm going to take it out on your hide tomorrow." 

_You and what army?_ Seph's glance said. "Just go, Zack. If she brings the food, I promise to eat it." 

"Good." And I used that as the cue to make my exit. 

And just how was Spiky going to react when I told him about his new status? Jump and shout? Fall over and faint? I grinned at nothing as I rode the elevator down, making a couple of people from the marketing department look at me funny. 

Cloud didn't do anything _quite_ as interesting as fainting when I found him in one of the small-t training rooms and told him the good news. His eyes did go real wide, though, and his mouth dropped open, and he staggered back against the nearest wall with his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword. And then the next minute, he was all adorable pissed-off chicobo. 

"That isn't funny, Zack!" 

"It wasn't a joke, Spike. I was going to take you on myself, but the General seriously thinks you have potential. Go figure. Anyway, it doesn't change our schedule for tonight: dinner at Aerith's place, followed by a hedgehog pie hunt through the second-lowest places in Midgar. Sephiroth said to take you to draw some materia before we go." 

"Congratulations, Strife." Dane Miller had been standing off to the side, listening in. Now he stepped forward to clap Cloud on the shoulder. "Not sure I envy you, though. General Sephiroth expects the very best." 

"You'll have Strife for sword work for a little while yet," I said. "Look after him, 'kay?" 

"Will do, Major." 

"Good. Let's go, Cloud." 

Cloud shut his mouth so hard that his teeth clicked, and followed me out. 

"Got any idea what kind of materia you want, Spiky?" I asked as we walked side-by-side along the hallway. 

Cloud shrugged. "A Restore, I guess. And at least one basic attack materia. Other than that, no." 

"Okay, that's two. If they issue you a standard Beta wristlet, you'll have space for six if you include the sockets on your sword. For practice, you'll want at least one Command materia. Sense, probably—it's one of the easiest to make, so they always have it in stock." I chewed on my bottom lip for a bit. "Seal and Exit are good for tricky situations. And a Shield, although you won't be able to use it right away, or a Heal if you're not willing to haul around something you can't use until it levels up. And Ice for the basic attack materia—it causes the smallest amount of collateral damage if you screw up." Ideally, he should have had the chance to practice with a Summon, too, but Shinra had never figured out how to create Summon materia artificially, and they weren't kept in the regular armoury. Hell, I'd only ever handled one myself—Garuda, the one Angeal had picked up during the looting of Wutai, that he'd let me practice-cast a few times. I didn't know what had happened to it after he— 

No, _bad_ Zack. Don't think about Angeal. This wasn't a time to be moping around. 

There was no time to requisition stuff through the normal SOLDIER setup, so we went down to the real armoury in the stem of the Plate instead. The grin that lit up Cloud's face as he accepted his materia and wristlet from the guard was incredible. Damn, it was an outright _relief_ being with this kid after a day of dealing with someone as stoic and stone-faced as Sephiroth, who made me work for every little reaction. _Don't ever change, Spike._

He put the Beta bracelet on right away and began to make fumbling tries to load it up. I let him have two or three before giving him any advice. 

"You can't force the materia into the slots physically, Spiky. Put it on the surface of the slot and then focus on the idea of it sinking in." 

Two more tries, and then he got it, eyes lighting up again as the little crystalline sphere sank into its holder. He did the other five quickly, which gave him five spells he could use, since he'd taken my advice and drawn the Shield even though he would have to level it before he could use it. 

We rode the elevator down to the ground floor where poor Tifa was kicking her heels in the lobby, and had been since they'd thrown her out of Medical a couple of hours ago. Girl had stamina, I'd grant her that—sitting on a plastic chair in an alcove reading a dog-eared four-year-old interior decorating magazine for that long wasn't something I'd have wanted to do. 

I guess Tifa must not have been too thrilled about the magazine either, 'cause she threw it under the chair and stood up the moment she spotted us. 

"It's about time, you two! Hello, Cloud. I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to seeing you like that, but it suits you." 

_Like what?_ I wondered, but what I said was, "Hey, don't I get a hello, too?" 

"I don't know—what do you think, Cloud? Should I? Or is he going to forget again that he already has a girlfriend?" 

"Hey! I don't ever forget." I mean, I did flirt with other girls sometimes, when I was away from Midgar, but I was never _serious_ about it. 

"'Hey, are you free tonight?' wasn't forgetting?" Tifa asked, and Cloud gave me a disappointed look. 

"Zack, you didn't." 

I rubbed the back of my head. "Well, it's considered good practice to get to know the locals when we're on missions like that—outreach and all that, y'know? And being paired with Sephiroth means I have to work twice as hard at it. It wasn't meant to imply any more than dinner and conversation. Really." And I really hadn't wanted more than that, but I didn't want to have to convince Aerith. Of course, she might understand without me talking about it. She could be . . . oddly wise, sometimes. 

"Um, Zack? If we don't go now, we're going to have to wait half an hour for the next train." 

"And I don't want to do any more waiting," Tifa added. 

"Right. Okay. Let's get to the station, then." 

I had to spring for Tifa's train ticket. She really didn't have a gil to her name, poor girl. Hopefully she'd find some kind of job soon. 

She clung to the window as we spiralled down into the darkness below the Plate. "This is . . . does light ever get down here? And the smell . . ." 

I figured I might as well tell her the truth. "Some light and fresh air gets in between the Plate and the border walls, but it isn't like being outside in, say, Nibelheim. It always smells like this." Rot and sewage and chemical fumes and unwashed humans and the sharp smell of mako, none of them individually all that strong, all mixed together to form the particular stink of the Midgar Slums. 

When I'd been a kid, I hadn't believed that anything could possibly smell worse than the muckier bits of the swamps around Gongaga. Boy, had I been wrong. 

"And your girlfriend _lives_ down here?" Tifa sounded scandalized. 

I shrugged. "Housing up on the Plate is expensive, and Aerith won't let me pay for them—she lives with her mother—to move. Says it would make her feel like a kept woman. If we ever get married, I'll try to make her change her mind then." 

" _If_ you get married?" Cloud prodded. "I thought the two of you were serious about each other." 

What did they teach these kids in Nibelheim, anyway? I'd had cross-examinations from Seph that were easier to deal with. "Being in SOLDIER's a risky business, Spike. If you didn't know that before . . . then I'm sorry, but you've already come too far on this ride to get off." 

"I know that," Cloud said. "And I'm not going to disappoint you. Or General Sephiroth." 

Which got us neatly off the topic so that I didn't have to talk about the _other_ half of my relationship problems—the part about how the Turks were always watching Aerith, and even she didn't quite know why. I hadn't even told _Angeal_ that, either in person or while speaking to his image in the Training Room. 

" _Now arriving at Sector Seven Lower Station! Sector Seven Lower!_ " 

"This is our stop," I told everyone, and led the way off the train. 

Tifa stared around as we left the station. I don't think a single dirt path between the ramshackle buildings escaped her. 

"This is horrible," she said. 

"It's pretty bad," I admitted, "but it isn't like we can do anything about it." 

"But you work for Shinra!" 

I shook my head. "Tifa, I don't know what you think we are, but SOLDIER doesn't set corporate policy. Even Sephiroth doesn't have any real _political_ power, and I've got even less." 

"Then why do you stay with them?" 

"'Cause it's better than spending the rest of my life catching touch-me frogs in a Gongaga swamp, which is what I'd probably be doing right now if I hadn't enlisted." And I couldn't help Sephiroth if I left—the idea of the Silver General ever breaking loose from Shinra was unthinkable. Angeal had made me promise . . . and really, I liked Seph for himself, even if he was a stiff-necked, stone-faced grouch most of the time. 

I was needed here. Even if it was tough sometimes.


	15. Chapter 15

**Cloud**

Aerith's house was small, but it was warm and bright inside and—somehow—surrounded by flowers, even though it was below the Plate. And it didn't have that Slums smell to it. I think it comforted Tifa right away, and Mrs. Gainsborough did the rest. 

". . . So we were kind of hoping Tifa could stay here until she gets a job and a place of her own," Zack said easily as we all sat around the table, finishing off the last of a pretty good homemade raisin pie. 

"Of course she can," Mrs Gainsborough said. 

"Thank you," Tifa said. 

"It'll be great!" Aerith added. "I don't have that many girlfriends. Anyone who's young enough always tries to move up to the Plate, or at least to one of the better Sectors, but I wouldn't be happy if I left my garden." 

Zack stretched. "Perfect! Okay, now that we've got that settled, I promised I'd take Cloud out on a hunt so that he can try out his new toys." 

"Can I come too?" Tifa asked. 

I wanted to hide my face in my hands. 

"Do you know how to fight?" Zack asked seriously. "This isn't going to be a sightseeing tour." 

"I know some martial arts. I've wanted to try them out in a real fight for a while now, but the monsters around Nibelheim are too strong for a beginner." 

"Why don't we all go?" Aerith suggested. "And don't give me that look, Zack—do you really think I've never killed a hedgehog pie before?" 

This had not been what I was expecting from tonight, but I knew I was just going to have to deal. Double date, instead of male bonding between me and Zack. _I can't believe I just thought that._ I mean, if it was a date, Zack would pair up with Aerith. Which left me with Tifa. Who I'd had the worst kind of crush on, as of a year ago. It was a wonder I wasn't turning bright red. Could mako treatments keep you from blushing? If so, I was going to lock myself in a tank of the stuff. 

"Have fun, dears, and don't stay up too late," Mrs Gainsborough said. 

Zack laughed. "No worries. My boss gets me up early. See you, ma'am." 

We almost tripped over each other grabbing boots and weapons at the entrance, but it was . . . almost fun. I'd never had any close friends in Nibelheim, or as a trooper for that matter, so having three people around me, close to my own age, that I could mostly trust . . . It came close to blowing my mind. 

Aerith's weapon was a staff that she carried strapped to her back like a SOLDIER sword. She must have been using it for a while, because she knew how to move with it, something I was still figuring out with respect to my sword. 

I didn't know how we were going to find a hedgehog pie—actually, I didn't even know what they looked like—so I was kind of stuck following Zack and Aerith around. Then again, so was Tifa. We followed the bare dirt paths partway, then squeezed between some pipes. The space on the other side of that narrow bit was just a little triangle of dirt, smaller than the room I was sharing with Vincent, but it had little tracks all over it. 

I revised my expectations of the hedgehog pies downwards. Anything with feet that small had to be less than waist-high. 

Something warty and purplish darted among the pipes. I started drawing my sword, then thought about the space and put it back again. I tried to push my mind into the Ice materia I was carrying instead. The little bugger . . . was . . . there. 

I targeted the ice spell, and let it flower and fade. Something landed on the ground with a thud, and I saw green sparks stream out from between the pipes. 

Zack grinned. "Got one, did you, Spiky? Pretty good. Here, I think we can climb up this." He pointed at one of the walls of pipes. 

Climbing wasn't difficult, exactly, but it was annoying that the girls made Zack and me go first, so that we couldn't look up any skirts. Like I would want to look up Tifa's skirt. I mean, it would be a slimy thing to do. 

"There's an entire other level up here, on the old rooftops but still below the Plate," Zack said as we stood at the top, waiting for the girls to cover the last couple of feet. "Seph showed me once when we were down here on a mission. You can even bypass some of the Sector checkpoints this way. I've still got no idea how he knew." 

"He must have come down here on his days off," I said. Assuming Sephiroth got days off, like us mere mortals. 

Zack shook his head. "He doesn't leave the Tower much, except for missions. It's . . . too complicated. I mean, think about it. His hair and general appearance are difficult enough to hide, but his eyes are the worst—they glow so bright that anything he could use to hide them would make him almost blind. Then think about what happens whenever someone spots a celebrity on a public street. Shinra hasn't been doing him any favours by putting him on those recruiting posters." 

"Well, if I had an apartment as nice as General Sephiroth's, I might not mind staying indoors," Tifa said, hauling herself the rest of the way up. Then, as she saw Zack staring at her, "What? There was a spread about it in that stupid decorating magazine that was the only thing to read in the lobby. You can only look at the product displays so many times, you know." 

"Oh, _that_ apartment," Zack said. "That isn't where he actually lives—they just use it for photo shoots. He's technically entitled to occupy it, but it's full of bugs and cameras. He uses a room down the hall from me on the topmost SOLDIER housing floor most of the time. One desk, one bookshelf, one single bed made like he was still in boot camp, nowhere to sit, nowhere to hide anything." 

"That seems kind of sad," Aerith said. Then, after a pause, "I still want to meet him, you know. You talk about him so much that I feel like I know him, but I've never spoken to him or been within ten feet." 

"He was polite but very distant when I met him in Nibelheim," Tifa said. "It wasn't until I saw him fight that I understood why Cloud admires him so much." 

I tried not to wince, because Tifa had been a witness to my Sephiroth obsession from the old days, when I'd plastered posters and clippings all over the walls of my room but hadn't really _known_ anything about the man. And now I was his student and knee-deep in his secrets, and everything was different . . . and yet it was the same, too. _Admit it, Cloud, you still really admire him._

"Ha! There we go—a whole pack of hedgehog pies!" Zack pointed at a purple blot on someone's roof. "Let's get 'em!" 

It ended up being mostly me and Tifa who "got 'em", while Aerith whacked at any that tried to come around and hit us from the back while we were occupied in front, and Zack . . . supervised. Well, okay, in all fairness, I knew creatures like these weren't any kind of challenge for him. He was just here to make sure the rest of us didn't get in more trouble than we could handle. 

There were something like fourteen of the little purple monsters in the pack, and when I'd finished the last one, I leaned on my sword and watched the lightshow while I caught my breath. Afterwards, there was a small vial left lying at the center of the roof. 

Zack went and picked it up for a look. "Potion," he said after a moment. "One of them must have swallowed it or something. I vote we give it to Tifa—she's the only one without Restore materia or healing skills." 

I shrugged. Aerith nodded. Tifa hesitated, but didn't stop Zack from pushing the thing into her hands. And then it was on to look for the next pack. 

We were halfway across the Sector, after having spent a while climbing from roof to roof, when Zack suddenly stopped and frowned, then jumped down to the ground. He landed in a little nook between two buildings—the kind of space that, in any town but Midgar, would have been full of weeds and litter and maybe a piece of rusted junk. Here, there were no weeds. Zack crouched down, and seemed to be looking at something in the dirt. 

When he straightened up again, he was scanning the whole area. After a moment, he seemed to fasten on something, and following his line of sight, I found I could just barely see a fading flash of something green and glowing, far away among the shadows of the plate. Mako green. 

Maybe there was a leak from one of the reactors? But that was kind of a minor thing, wasn't it? I mean, sure, mako in uncontrolled amounts without the extras SOLDIERs get is poison, but everyone _knows_ that. It isn't something people touch by accident. And it wasn't Zack's job to clean up industrial spills. So why was he suddenly so tense? 

"Hey, Zack, everything okay down there?" I called. 

When Zack tilted his head up to answer, I could tell from his expression that he'd transition from being just my friend and Aerith's boyfriend to Major Zack Fair, Shinra SOLDIER First Class. 

"There's something here that shouldn't be," he said. "Aerith, I hate to ask you, but . . . have there been any unusual disappearances lately?" 

Aerith frowned. "I don't _think_ so, but there are people in the Sector that . . . well, it isn't unusual for them to hole up somewhere and then no one sees them for weeks. Why? What did you find? And why does it . . . feel wrong?" Her eyes glinted brighter green, and an odd expression passed across her face. Like she was trying to listen to something that wasn't quite loud enough to hear clearly. 

"I have some tracks down here that look one heck of a lot like they belong to a bagnadrana. Normally, they live near Corel. I've never heard of finding one in Midgar." 

"Maybe someone's pet got loose," Tifa said. 

"Maybe, if there's someone here with really weird taste in pets. But it's a lot more dangerous than a hedgehog pie. Aerith, can I ask you to take Tifa home with you? This is SOLDIER business now." 

Aerith nodded. She was all business too, as she put her hand on Tifa's shoulder, and I could see why Zack liked her so much. "We'll go. But please be careful." 

"I don't want to leave," Tifa said, but she mumbled it. 

Zack grinned up at us. "Don't worry, it's not _that_ dangerous. Just not a beginner's monster." 

He hadn't told _me_ to go back, and anyway, I was a SOLDIER now, so this was my business too. Still, one mako treatment didn't make me confident enough to jump down from the roof the way Zack had. So I climbed instead. I mean, it wasn't like the building was all that well put together, or at least it had more handholds than a mountain cliff. 

Zack waited until I was down before he turned and began to jog, staring at the ground. What I knew about tracking wasn't much good under city conditions, so I just followed along again. We were definitely heading in the direction where I'd seen that flash of mako light. 

". . . Cloud." From the sound of his voice, Zack was still in Major Fair mode. 

"Yes, sir?" Matching him was probably best, I figured. 

"If there's more wrong here than I think there is, and I tell you to leave, then _leave_. Report to Sephiroth. Got it?" 

". . . Yes, sir." I didn't want to say it, but I knew I had to. "But for now, can we just pretend that it's somebody's pet that's gotten loose?" 

Seeing Zack's smile come back made me feel better than it ever had before. "Sure, Spike. And at least it's not a behemoth." 

"Or a Nibel dragon," I added. 

"Or a malboro. Ugh, those things are awful. I had to fight one once, with Angeal. Stupid critter found its way to Icicle Inn and was attacking the tourists. It turned me into a confused, poisoned frog, and believe me, you do _not_ want to be a frog in a place that cold. Plus, I fell off the edge of a ski run. By the time Angeal pulled me out of the snowbank I'd landed in, I was a frog-shaped block of ice." Zack shuddered. 

"They frogged us once in Basic, so that we'd know what it felt like." And it had been _weird_. Not just because of the ground-level perspective, either. "One guy in my troop ate a fly, and then threw up his breakfast when they turned us back." 

"There's always one," Zack said, with a grin. "With all the touch-mes around Gongaga, I used to get frogged at least a couple of times a month as a kid. There were two ways to deal with it: either throw yourself at the touch-me again, kamikaze-style, so that it hit you again and changed you back, or get used to the flies." 

I scrunched up my nose. "Ew." 

"I have to admit, I always did the kamikaze thing." 

"You would." I mean, it was just so . . . Zack. 

Suddenly, Zack went serious again, and held up his hand. _Stop._ He touched his ear. _Listen._ Signals they'd thumped into us in Basic Training. Before the frog thing. 

I stopped and listened. Tried holding my breath, even. Heard three heartbeats, faintly, and footfalls that were in the wrong pattern for anything human, or even for something four-legged. How many legs did a bagnadrana have? How big were they? I wished I'd thought to ask. 

There was a sort of shed, barely holding together, right ahead of us. Suddenly, a really ugly head, horned and reptilian, with tiny yellow eyes the colour of Rufus Shinra's hair, popped up over the crest of the roof. 

Oh. So that was what a bagnadrana looked like. 

The next moment, it was crashing through the shed, and Zack had the Buster Sword out and was moving to his right, away from me. I pulled out my own, nameless sword and began to circle to the left. Basic of the basics when it comes to tactics: trap the enemy between you so that it has to divide its attention, then hope that one of you can get a lucky shot in. Which I knew wasn't going to be me, but at least I could play bait. 

Unfortunately, the bagnadrana wasn't having any. It went after Zack immediately, clawing at him. Zack blocked with the Buster Sword, while I pounded on its right middle leg (it had turned out to have six) without getting through the leathery hide, and yelled. Nope, it still had its eyes on Zack, straining against him and leaning down for a chomp. 

Well, I had materia, and maybe one more spell in me, although I'd used up a lot on the hedgehog pies. I wished I'd known this was coming, so that I would have been able to pace myself better. Stupid Cloud. But there wasn't anything I could do to change it now. I'd just have to use up what mental energy I had left. 

_Ice,_ I willed, plunging my mind into the materia. 

A fragile, translucent flower opened in front of me, and the bagnadrana roared and thrashed, nearly giving me a faceful of tail. I bent backward like I was trying to do the limbo and avoided it, and when I could look again . . . well, the bagnadrana wasn't dead, but it was a pretty sorry sight. The ice spell had opened up big gashes in its hide, all covered in red crystals of frozen blood, and Zack was slashing at its throat. 

He wasn't making much progress in killing it the rest of the way, though. It got its head in the way every time, and the Buster Sword struck sparks off its horns and teeth. It breathed a black cloud in his face, and Zack shook his head and kept going, but his face was turning green-grey. Poison. And I didn't have any antidotes, and even if I'd had any mental strength left, I'd taken that Shield materia instead of the Heal . . . 

_Think!_ There had to be something I could do, some part of this thing that was soft enough that a green Third Class with only one mako treatment under his belt could make a hole in it. Legs, no. I'd tried that. Back, no. Belly, maybe, if I could get under there. Tail . . . the tail was raised, and the area underneath it . . . wasn't featureless. 

_I can't believe I'm even considering this._

I, Cloud Strife. 

Raised my shiny new sword. 

And stuck it up the bagnadrana's ass. 

The monster threw its head back and roared in agony while I tried not to choke on the smell I'd just let loose, ten times worse than summer at the sewage lagoon outside Nibelheim. What did this thing _eat_? And then Zack slashed its throat and I lost my grip on my sword as the whole creature came crashing down and started dissolving into green sparks. 

Zack shook the blood off the Buster Sword and sheathed it, then stretched and rolled his shoulders, groaning. "Man, that was . . . more of a workout than I expected. Way tougher than the local monsters. Just like the king behemoths Seph and Vincent fought were way tougher than what you usually see around Midgar." 

"You think they're connected?" My voice came out kind of funny, because I was holding my nose. 

"They can't _not_ be, Spike. Unless the stupid thing hiked here from Corel and slipped past all the guards to get into the slums." 

"We really are going to have to report this, aren't way?" 

"As soon as we get back to the Tower. We can wait long enough for your sword to come clean, though." 

I looked at where the hilt was still sticking out of the dissolving bagnadrana, and groaned. "I'm going to be known for the rest of my life as 'the guy who killed a monster by goosing it', aren't I?" Never mind that I hadn't actually done the killing. I knew how stories in the barracks tended to change over time. 

Zack grinned. "Probably." 

I hid my face in my hands, because what I'd thought was one of the best days of my life was actually shaping up to be the worst. Something I should have been getting used to by now.


	16. Chapter 16

**Sephiroth**

I would have liked to slam the door to my quarters, but such displays of childish temperament had once earned me such dire consequences that I now suppressed them automatically. Only once the door was already closed did I even identify the impulse. 

It was eleven o'clock at night, and I had only just finished the pile of paperwork the executive had dumped on me for the day. A year ago, SOLDIER had had a Director, a general, two colonels, and over seven hundred fifty men of assorted lesser ranks. Now we had only one general for just under three hundred men, and not all of the paperwork scaled with the size of the force. Even with Zack to help, I was doing four people's work. 

I allowed myself a single sigh as I placed Masamune on her stand. The truth was that the endless avalanche of paper was wearing me down. Nibelheim had represented the first time in two months that I had been able to leave Midgar for more than a few hours, and the situation there had hardly been such as to permit me to . . . blow off steam. I was almost beginning to wish for more king behemoths. Or even another war. 

Nevertheless, I knew my chances of getting to sleep within the next hour or so were slim to none. There was too much on my mind. Hojo and the Science Department and Jenova. Stray monsters. Cloud Strife. I'd exhausted my stock of _useful_ thoughts on all of those subjects already, but my mind kept treading the same paths over and over again. I needed a distraction to break the cycle. 

. . . Now that I thought about it, there was one in my pocket. I hadn't done anything with Lucrecia Crescent's diary yet except glance at the first few pages and use it to bluff Hojo. I pulled it out and placed it on the bed before removing my coat and boots, then picked it up again as I sat down on the mattress, leaning against the wall. No need to turn on the lights—ironically, my eyes themselves shed enough light for my augmented vision to make out what was on the pages, and there was enough additional illumination spilling in through the window that the room wasn't pitch black even when I blinked. 

Lucrecia—I still had a hard time thinking of her as my mother—had begun this volume of her diary with a delightfully irony-laced series of observations on the town of Nibelheim that made the corners of my mouth turn up. Beyond that . . . on some days, she wrote only a brief note about the weather, or about her feelings when an experiment exasperatingly failed for the Nth time. On others, there was more—personal interactions with Gast Faremis, with a Turk whose name she didn't find out until several weeks after they'd met, with a Hojo that I scarcely recognized as the same sour man who had ruled what passed for my childhood. Lucrecia's Hojo was outspoken rather than slimy, raising his voice to challenge everyone around him. Including Lucrecia herself. Perhaps, I mused, it was success that had changed him. The younger Hojo had still been fairly junior, years away from presenting his greatest success—me—to the Shinra Board of Directors and attaining his present position. 

And perhaps it was still possible to see that Hojo inside the current one if you looked closely enough. From challenging other humans, he had moved on to attempting to challenge the universe itself. Rather than submitting to reality and studying it, he chose to fight it and change it. 

That combativeness was the first similarity I could ever remember detecting between us, and it made me feel vaguely disgusted. 

Was there something whispering to me, in the darkness of the soundproof room? Ridiculous. I focused on the noise and it became nothing more than a faint susuration of static. Something irritated in my inner ear, no doubt. And certainly not another outbreak of Jenova. 

I flipped forward through the diary until my eye snagged on a name in a longer entry, and read: 

_Vincent proposed to me today._

_There was no chance of my not turning him down, of course, but I couldn't tell him the real reason, so I said it was because Hojo and I had an understanding. Which we do, in a sense, but it's more implicit than formal and mapped out. And Vincent just went with it, putting on his Turk face and withdrawing. He didn't want to fight for me. Odd, when you consider that he's the most physically combative person here, but I suppose he thought he was respecting my wishes._

_I couldn't take a lifetime of that solicitude. Hojo and I strike sparks off each other all the time. He stimulates me, and I don't mean just in bed, although there's that too. But what I really need Hojo for is his willingness to tear down my ideas. Whenever I manage to get something past him unscathed, I know it's solid. Vincent and I, on the other hand, have ZERO chemistry. He's a good friend, but he won't ARGUE with me, and I'm not interested in taking him to bed._

_That isn't the only thing, of course. But I can't bring myself to tell Vincent about his father and me. To know that he proposed, not only to his father's murderer, but to his father's one-time LOVER . . . I'm not certain what it would do to him. Even though what Grimoire and I had was in no way illegal—he was long-divorced by that time, and only my supervisor in the loosest way—I can't help but feel that Vincent would take it badly. Even without the hint of almost-incest that turns his proposal into a black farce._

So my mother had chosen her mate less for reasons pertaining to that intangible known as _love_ than for how he fit into her life as a scientist, and had rejected Vincent because he didn't fit into that life, and because of some odd moral hang-ups. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but then the concept of pairing off was one that I had never understood more than superficially. 

That people do such things and consider them of great importance is obvious even to the most uninterested observer of humanity. _Love_ has spawned more literature than any other single concept in the history of mankind. But I had never experienced it myself. Genesis had accused me more than once of being emotionally stunted, and I didn't doubt he was right. I had been taught repeatedly not to show emotion. Tears, tantrums, even laughter . . . Hojo had rewarded those with vivisection of some portion or other of my anatomy, supposed experiments that produced results redundant with those already collected. Even now, allowing myself more than a certain level of reaction brought with it an echo of pain. It wasn't impossible that some part of me had withered away in the midst of all of that. 

Shortly after her refusal of Vincent, Lucrecia's diary became studded with mentions of Doctor Hollander and a "Project G" which appeared to be . . . _J-cells with a tightly restricted provision of mako; what does that fool think he's doing? Hojo agrees with me that it can't possibly work. And attempting to purify the cells by transferring them between human hosts strikes me as nothing short of idiotic. Hojo is eager to set up a counter-experiment according to our own theories, to make Hollander look like the third-rate hack that he is._

If "Project G" had been named for its primary subject, as "Project S" had been named for me . . . My hand crumpled the diary. _Genesis, is that you?_

Unfortunately, Lucrecia mentioned no more details about Hollander's project, only about her own: _My pregnancy is so remarkably timely that if I were the superstitious sort, I would think it was the will of the Planet. We're working up the schedule for the J-cell and mako injections right now. I know there's a certain amount of risk to me—the results of J-cell exposure in human non-stem-cell cultures have been variable—but Hojo and I agree that risk is inevitable in expanding the horizons of human knowledge. It's another thing that poor Vincent would never understand._

Risk. I understood risk, but not taking it on for so little reward. I was beginning to understand what had happened in Nibelheim all those years ago: Hojo's need to prove himself, Lucrecia's belief in him and in herself, and an unborn child swept up by events. 

That entry was followed by many shorter ones about the experiment and Lucrecia's own deteriorating condition, which she stubbornly insisted on ascribing to her pregnancy itself. I had seen the syndrome before, however, in early SOLDIER-candidates from the days before the current test regimen had been developed, whose bodies had rejected the enhancement treatments. I could recognize its progression, symptom by symptom. 

And then, a sudden longer entry: _What have I done? This has been such a tangled, difficult, impossible day. I confronted Vincent about my relationship to his father's death. He . . . barely reacted. To that, anyway. Instead, he was worried about me. And the baby._

_I think he's the first one ever to have called it a BABY, rather than "the fetus", and it made me feel very strange. I'd never thought of it as a person before, and I would have sworn I had no maternal feelings, but something about that hit me right in the gut. I was sick after Vincent left, not that that's all that odd lately. And I keep hearing these words in my head, about "my son" and "my child" and I don't . . . This lump inside my stomach is a little boy, and I don't know what I've DONE to him. And suddenly everything I thought was right seems so wrong, and I can't_

The text ended there, although I could tell several pages had been torn from the binding. The rest of the book was blank, leaving me to consider the inner life of the woman who had borne me, and whether being distorted by my parents' scientific ambition was really all that much better than having been born from a test tube. 

A mere week ago, I think it might have broken me. I'd been in something that even I could recognize as emotional pain (although I would have been hard-put to say of what sort) ever since Genesis and Angeal had deserted. Like having the wall I had been leaning on inside my head suddenly topple over and leave me off-balance. But for the past few days, someone's shoulder had been there for me to grip and steady myself. 

_Vincent_. I still wasn't entirely sure why his presence mattered. He wasn't like Genesis or Angeal or Zack, continually trying to prod me out of my shell. He was just _there_ , respecting the boundaries I set, offering of himself without expecting anything in return. And that seemed to satisfy an inner need I hadn't realized I had. 

I only wished he hadn't had so much guilt squirreled away . . . although it was a form guilt I could understand. He had failed to help and protect a friend who was in distress. If I had been more aware, if I had fought for them, would Genesis and Angeal be here with me right now? 

Why couldn't I just wave all of that emotional messiness aside, as I'd been trained, tortured, _conditioned_ to do? 

_Why does it matter? Why you? Why now?_

I shook my head. Rather than breaking the cycle of analyzing everything to death, I seemed to be giving my brain another well-worn track to run along. That meant that perhaps the best thing for me to do was not think at all. 

I'd go to the training room. Beating the holographic monsters there didn't require thinking—I'd been doing it for so long that I knew all their patterns. But it might, eventually, tire me enough that I'd be able to deactivate the more calculating parts of my brain for a bit and snatch an hour or two of rest before dawn came. Better than sitting here staring at nothing, at any rate. 

Having decided, I pulled my boots back on and made sure my PHS was in my pocket, in case of emergency. I considered leaving my coat, but by the time I got back here the custodial staff might be doing their early morning rounds. Better to dress properly, for the sake of the ridiculous _image_ the PR department had foisted on me. Much though I might resent being in the public eye, it was also a form of protective armour. A celebrity was more difficult to make vanish than an unknown. Hojo couldn't make me disappear into his lab again while my face was all over the recruiting posters. 

The hallway outside my door wasn't empty. 

"Vincent," I said, somehow unsurprised. I noted a small change in his appearance, a much heavier gun holstered at his leg. Just as well, given the lack of capabilities his old one had demonstrated against the king behemoths. 

"Guess you couldn't sleep either," the ex-Turk said, falling into step beside me. 

I raised an eyebrow. "And what is interrupting your peaceful rest? Or does young Strife snore?" 

"He isn't back yet. And he doesn't." Vincent hesitated for a moment, then added, "Veld loaned me some of the Turks' files earlier today. A lot of it was things I already knew, but there's some peripheral information . . . I was trying to decide whether it was worth telling you or not." 

I glanced pointedly at the camera that stared at us from right above the elevator door. _Is this information volatile?_

"Perhaps not in the hallway," Vincent allowed. 

"My office, then." Not that I'd been intending to go back there tonight, but I would have felt like a fool if I had turned around and returned to my quarters. 

The elevator ride was pleasantly silent. People locked in such a small space with me tended to either be frightened out of their wits or babble to fill the quiet. Neither was my preference, but ordering someone not to be afraid was, in my experience, counterproductive, and ordering someone to be quiet tended to make them either frightened or resentful. Vincent, however, was quiet, but not out of fright. He only watched me, but what I might have resented coming from someone else seemed entirely acceptable when coming from him. 

It had come to feel almost routine for us to settle across from each other at my desk. All that was missing was Zack standing to my right, and Cloud with the coffee. Had we been doing this for three days, or only two? 

"What do you know about a Project G?" Vincent asked abruptly. 

My life lately was full of the most peculiar coincidences. "Less than I should and more than I would like. It was . . . an alternative version, headed by Hojo's rival Hollander, of the project that produced me. It was less successful, in that its final product was less stable than myself." _I hope._ That had been a gnawing fear of mine for a while now. That I was going to end up like Genesis, my body rotting away around me before I reached thirty. I found myself testing my healing factor in small ways, shallow cuts, pressure designed to produce bruises. So far, everything had been normal. 

"The Turks acquired most of Hollander's papers, from what I could tell." Vincent settled deeper into my guest chair, legs crossed. "They weren't all in what they showed me, and I can't claim to have understood everything that was there . . . although I likely got more out of it than most would. You couldn't have saved them." 

I felt my fingers jerk, just slightly, where they'd been resting on the surface of the desk. 

"'J-cell mediated auto-immune disorder'—that's what Hollander's notes call it. Their systems had decided that the modified Jenova cells in their bodies were _properly theirs_ , and the remaining human cells were dangerous intruders. But the modified cells weren't enough to sustain life on their own, and the balance was gradually tilting in the wrong direction. There was a printout of part of an email discussion between Hollander and Hojo included in the file, and Hojo didn't think either Angeal Hewley or Genesis Rhapsodos would live to be thirty. Knocking out their immune systems completely might have preserved them for another five years or so, but Hojo didn't think strong enough drugs existed." 

I could feel a wave of some nameless emotion cresting inside me—rage, grief, perhaps even madness, flaring up no matter how I tried to repress it, making my hands ache with the desire to murder a man long outside my reach. _Hollander . . ._ He'd killed them. Killed the closest thing I had ever had to friends, by including them in his wretched experiments. Events had only resulted in Angeal dying a little sooner. 

And Vincent was right—there was nothing I could have done. Not if the problem had been caused by the _not-Jenova_ parts of them dying off. The only thing I could have given them was more, purer Jenova. And that was the last thing they had needed. 

I was shaking again, as I had on the day Vincent had told me Hojo was most likely my father. I needed to act. I _couldn't_ act. I couldn't even kill the messenger. 

Something pressed against my left palm. I looked down, and saw Vincent's right hand joined with mine. 

"Break my fingers if you need to," the ex-Turk said. "There's no one to see you here but me. The trick is always to let out just enough to get everything under control again." 

My eyes darted to his face. Red eyes met mine levelly. "Is that what they teach you in the Turks?" 

"A spy or an assassin needs control more than most. And I heal quickly now." There was a hint of self-deprecating humour in that, I noted, even as I ground down on his hand hard to make the bones creak. He was right that it did help, a bit. I was able to stop shaking much more quickly this time, to control my anger at what I couldn't change. 

"If you have any more revelations about the past for me, please withhold them for at least six months," I said tartly when I was finally able to drive the tension from my body. 

Vincent nodded, expression serious. "This is harder on you than anyone else—you're at the center of everything that's happening, while the rest of us are more peripheral. That was one of the reasons I was reluctant to discuss this with you. I'm aware that you can tolerate extreme stress, but I also know that you do have a breaking point, like any other man, and will eventually reach it if the pressure continues to rise." 

I was still searching for a response when someone knocked on the door. "Hey, Seph, you in there?" 

"You're supposed to be asleep, Zack." There was going to be hell to pay if we were _all_ exhausted tomorrow. 

"Sorry, but I've got something to report, and I don't think it can wait for morning. I mean, even my girlfriend thought it was weird, and she's lived in the slums all her life." 

"Come in, then." 

It wasn't just Zack, but Cloud as well. Both looking serious, which I suspected wasn't good. 

And I was right, it wasn't. Additional out-of-place monsters, inside Midgar? 

My first instinct was to consider whether Hojo might have gone the rest of the way off the deep end, but this didn't really feel like him. When Hojo played with monsters, he generally started by _improving_ them. And why a bagnadrana? It was stronger than the average Midgar slum monster, but not as powerful as the king behemoths. 

Unless the creature hadn't been chosen so much as _convenient_. But that felt wrong too. 

"This isn't worth waking anyone up for," I said slowly, "but in the morning, I want to find out if any of the recording equipment in the under-Plate areas caught anything. Strife, you'll check the official records. Zack, talk to the technicians—the reactors crews have some sensors and cameras in place to monitor associated plumbing. Vincent, check with Veld." 

"Yes, sir." 

"Right." 

Vincent nodded. 

I just hoped I was wrong. If it had been only the bagnadrana, that would be one thing, but the king behemoths . . . There was a pattern here, and the arrival of the various creatures was not an accident. Which suggested there would be more.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not _quite_ NSFW, although if Vincent had let himself be swept away for a moment longer, it might have become so. (I'll mark the few chapters that contain actual sex when we get to them, since there are apparently some people who are reading this in spite of, rather than because of, the main pairing being male/male.)
> 
> In other news, this 'fic has almost drawn more subscribers than everything else I've posted on AO3 _combined_. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since the recent remake trailer has put new life into this fandom, and I have a habit of writing for obscure older anime and JRPGs that are of less interest to many people, but still . . .

**Vincent**

"I'm sorry, Vincent. You were right about Hojo . . . I was such a fool." Lucrecia had tears in her eyes as she spoke. "Let's leave. I'll go anywhere with you, as long as it isn't Nibelheim or Midgar." 

Had it all been just a horrible dream? The thought crossed my mind for a split second as I wrapped my arms around her . . . but there was still a brass-washed claw covering my left hand. This was the dream, then. And yet still I clung to her. 

"Anything you want," I said, words thick in my throat. 

"Are you certain of that?" Not Lucrecia's voice, but a smooth baritone that currently held the faintest note of amusement. The body in my arms was no longer slim and soft, but tall and muscular. Long, silken hair brushed against the back of my good hand. 

I tried to pull away, but the arm around my waist was too strong for me. And Sephiroth was looking into my eyes from mere inches away. 

"Anything _I_ want . . . That might be dangerous, Vincent." It was almost a purr—a tone I'd never heard before in his voice. Although it suited him so very well. My breath was mingling with his. Another moment, and our lips would touch. I should have turned away, but I felt frozen in place. There was a hand sliding down near my belt, beginning to untuck my shirt, rubbing circles into my back. 

"Where is that guilt of yours now?" Sephiroth murmured. "Are you really so stiff with it that you _would_ let me do anything I desired to you? No matter how much pain it might cause? Perhaps you even dream of me punishing you for your failings. Is that it, Vincent? Do you want me to hurt you until you feel you've atoned for sulking in a coffin for twenty years while leaving me to Hojo's tender mercies?" 

And maybe part of me did want that. This was a dream, after all: a projection of my subconscious. Everything that happened here was coming from me. Or maybe from Chaos. It had been meddling in my dreams ever since it had been forced on me. 

That thought finally spurred me into turning my head. The place we were in looked like the front room of the Nibelheim mansion, but it wavered as though unable to decide whether to represent itself in the splendour of a quarter-century ago, or as the dusty, worn-down demi-ruin I had last seen. 

"I know you're here," I growled at an empty corner. "There's no way you wouldn't be watching this." 

"Show yourself!" That was Sephiroth, voice no longer purring as he released me, reaching over his shoulder for Masamune's hilt as sharp, green eyes scanned the shadows. Apparently I couldn't imagine him _not_ reacting to a potential threat. 

Chaos' laughter as it materialized at the base of the left-hand flight of stairs was all too familiar. Behind me, Masamune slid from the scabbard with a soft _shching_ , the long blade entering my peripheral vision as Sephiroth's image raised it threateningly. 

"I have to admit that I do find the mating rituals of humans fascinating. Do you really want him to hurt you, Vincent?" I was familiar enough with Chaos by this point to interpret that expression as a smile of amusement, rather than an I-want-to-eat-you smile. 

_Yes. No. I don't know._ "Does it matter?" 

The creature tilted its head to one side. "It makes me curious. I have seldom been incarnate, due to my nature, and you and I are not properly joined. Usually I can make sense of your actions, but your attitude toward this individual makes me puzzled. You want him so badly, and yet you will not admit it to yourself . . . much less approach him with your desire to mate. And he appears not to see it at all." 

"Do you always babble such nonsense?" dream-Sephiroth asked in an acid tone. Suddenly, he lunged forward, Masamune blurring as it swept down toward Chaos' head. My subconscious trying to be rid of the creature, no doubt. 

Chaos raised its hand and caught the blade of the sword between thumb and foretalon, and the eyes of Sephiroth's image narrowed in rage as he wrenched the weapon loose. 

"You believe in him," the creature mused. "How very odd. Again." 

"I wouldn't fight by his side if I didn't." And what was I doing just standing here? I could feel the weight of a gun against my leg. I didn't know whether it was Cerberus or the Quicksilver or some other weapon from longer ago, but I pulled it out and shot from the hip. The bullet pierced Chaos' chest, and then the entire room folded in on itself. 

The ceiling ruffled my hair as I sat up in bed—one of the disadvantages of having the top bunk, although I didn't really mind. I'd slept in worse places. Generally for more than three hours as indicated by the time on Cloud's chocobo clock, though. Well, it didn't really matter. I didn't need as much rest as I had when I had been . . . truly human. 

I lay back again, since I had nowhere I needed to be and there was no point in rousing my young roommate. He had enough problems of his own. However, that left me with nothing to do but analyze my dream to death. 

It could have been worse. For once, I had managed to get the upper hand over Chaos by some method other than expending mental energy in what amounted to a spell. Although I'd needed the help of the Sephiroth I had created inside my head. 

The part before that hadn't been so pleasing, though. Lucrecia turning into Sephiroth and propositioning me. How much of that had been Chaos, and how much had been me? 

I wanted to blame it all on the monster inside of me, but it had said itself that the unexpected BDSM talk rather confused it, so that had to have been at least partially summoned out of me. Punishment, atonement . . . Wasn't I already doing enough? I was giving Sephiroth all the support I could. I was . . . 

. . . enjoying it far too much. Which meant at all. Reconnecting with Veld. Sparring verbally with Reno, and physically with Zack. Even the king behemoth fight would have been enjoyable on some level if I hadn't run out of bullets. 

And . . . Sephiroth. Lucrecia's son had grown into a fine man, strong and intelligent and more responsible than I would have expected, given who had raised him. I liked him. Enjoyed his company, and the way our silences seemed to fit together almost too well. 

That didn't mean I was in love, or even in lust, with him, as Chaos had been trying to imply. Although it was true that I'd never cared very much about my partners' plumbing, and true also that Sephiroth was a very attractive man, with his silver hair, elegant features, startling mako-green eyes, and perfectly developed swordsman's body. Which I had gotten a very good look at on the day we'd first arrived in Midgar, when he'd emerged from the shower with no shirt on. 

I grimaced as I felt myself developing a semi-erection at the memory. It might even have been the first time since Hojo had shot me that I'd experienced arousal. I couldn't remember, and there was some time between the gunshots and the coffin that was too scrambled for me to make sense out of. But in any case, if I were to be honest with myself, it appeared that I _was_ somewhat sexually attracted to Sephiroth. 

It wasn't something I was going to burden him with, however. He was already under a nearly intolerable amount of emotional pressure, as he had demonstrated last night. And outside of combat, he had no outlets to speak of for stress relief. Last night, I had found a festering sore inside him without really meaning to, and I wasn't sure that it had been completely lanced and drained even yet. Nor was it likely to be the only one. He needed my support, not another weight to endure . . . and this was far from the first time that I had shoved a nascent attraction aside. At least this time, I wasn't doing it because I had to kill whoever I'd just fallen for. That had happened in the past—in fact, it was common enough that junior Turks got a specific lecture on it. 

Sephiroth deserved better than me—ghost, failure, and cold-blooded killer. He needed someone who wouldn't serve as a constant reminder of Hojo and Shinra and labs and experiments. Even after this was over (assuming that a finite, separable "this" ever emerged from the morass we were floundering through), I had no intention of attempting to court him. Even if he showed some indication of being interested. Perhaps I would take Reno up on his offer, instead. 

So with that settled, although perhaps not to Chaos' satisfaction, I let my eyes fall shut again until I was woken by the " _Wark! W-w-wark!_ " of that ridiculous clock. 

An hour later, I found myself entering the Turks' domain once more, only to be brought up short by an unexpected voice. 

". . . And I tell you, it was _weird_. Even Aerith said so." 

What was Zack doing here? 

"'Fraid Tseng didn't see anything," Reno replied. "Or if he did, he didn't say." 

"I still don't get why the higher-ups have him trying to recruit her," Zack said. "And she says she doesn't know either." 

"Neither do I. Neither does anyone, unless Veld or Tseng know something that they aren't telling the rest of us. Or, hey, maybe the Gen'ral knows." 

"I've never told Sephiroth that you guys are keeping an eye on her," Zack said. 

Reno—I could see them now, standing in a shadowy corner of the lounge—gave Zack an odd look. "Why not? Or should that be—does he even know you're dating?" 

"He knows, but I've never said all that much to him about Aerith. It's just not the kind of thing he'd be interested in. Seph doesn't do relationships, you know that." 

Which reinforced what Reno himself had said about Sephiroth—had it only been yesterday? The ridiculous early-morning-to-late-night schedule we had all been running on made it feel as though it had been longer. 

"Hey, Vince," Reno said, and he and Zack turned to look at me. "Looking for the boss again? He isn't in yet. Not until nine, probably. Tseng promised to sit on him if he didn't get some rest." 

"I'll come back, then." What else could I do? 

"You could tell me what'cher looking for—Veld gave us all orders to help you out. No limits, at least when it comes to information." Reno shook his head, as though wondering what Veld was thinking. 

"Unusual events under the Plate in the last few days," I said after a moment's consideration. "Security footage, if it's available." 

Reno glanced at Zack, then back at me. "Oh- _ho_. This is about that beastie Zack found running around the slums last night, isn't it?" 

"Yes." There was no point in prevaricating about it. 

Reno scratched his head. "We might have to requisition the footage, and it would help if you could narrow it down to a specific area, at least. Hmm. Y'know, actually . . ." He went over to one of the computers in the open office area used by the junior Turks (currently unoccupied), turned it on, and began to fiddle with the keyboard. I positioned myself to look at the screen over his shoulder, while Zack did the same on the other side. 

Computers had certainly changed in the past quarter-century. I hadn't seen a single amber or green screen in the past several days, they all had touch-screens or those odd "mouse" devices, and the interface Reno was currently manipulating was bewildering. The best I could do to orient myself was read whatever text came up on the screen. It seemed to be a list of . . . devices. Not all of them had useful labels— _Mako Sensor 8C_ was fairly clear, but _27DHF678N_ could have been anything. 

"Lessee if we can get a map," Reno said, and started tapping and mouse-wiggling again, making screens fly past much too quickly for me to read anything. "Yeah, that's my baby . . ." He hit one last key with a flourish, and a map of Midgar popped into being, looking like a sectioned orange. "Mind telling me where to start?" 

"Zoom in on Sector Five a bit, and . . . um . . . maybe quarter to eleven last night? About here." Zack touched the screen. 

Reno tapped his lower lip with his index finger. "No cameras, but we've got a couple of infrared sensors. That's almost as good. So if I . . . there, that's it." 

Weirdly-coloured silhouettes moving through blackness appeared in a rectangular space on the screen. Cloud and Zack were easily distinguishable one from the other because their heights were so different. 

"That's afterward, I think," Zack said. "Can you run it in reverse for a bit?" 

"Who do you think you're talking to?" The figures on the screen wiggled around rapidly, and something larger appeared behind them. 

"Trace it back to before Zack and Cloud approached it," I said. 

"Gotcha." The bagnadrana ran away backwards, until it was suddenly gone. "That's weird. Did it just pop in? Wait a minute." Reno killed the glowing silhouettes and went back to his map. "There's a real camera that might juuuuust have caught it, yo. Black and white, though. It's an oldie." 

"Well, don't hold us in suspense!" Zack said. "Show us what you have." 

"It isn't quite that easy, yo. I've never even heard of this codec before . . . hmm, okay . . . I think this maybe . . ." 

It wasn't so much a video as a slideshow. We went from one still image to another, with maybe half a second of elapsed time separating the images in the sequence. The bagnadrana backed onto the screen and appeared to vanish in a flash of light. 

Zack blinked. "Does that mean it . . . just appeared?" 

"Monsters sometimes do," I said, with a shrug. "Not usually something as physical as a bagnadrana, though." 

"Thought they taught you about stuff like that in SOLDIER," Reno said, just as an annoying piece of tinny music began to play somewhere nearby. 

"Damn," Zack muttered, and pulled his PHS out of his pocket. 

" _You were supposed to be in my office five minutes ago, Major Fair._ " 

"Sorry about that, sir—unavoidably detained. I'll be there in a couple." Zack hung up the call. As he moved to put the device back in his pocket, I caught a glimpse of the photo on its surface. Something about it bothered me. 

"Is that your girlfriend in the picture?" I asked, hoping for a better look that would make my intuition disgorge whatever it had picked up on. 

Zack grinned widely. "Yeah, we took it a few months ago," he said, and, as I had hoped, held the picture up to be admired. "Her name's Aerith Gainsborough—she and her mother live in Sector 5." 

Familiar. The girl's face was familiar, but I knew I hadn't met her since my return to Midgar, she was far too young for me to have seen her before Nibelheim, and I couldn't remember ever having known anyone named Gainsborough. "Her father?" 

"Died in the war with Wutai. He was in the infantry. I don't think she remembers him very well—she would have been pretty young." 

Which meant that her father might literally have been anyone. And Hojo thought she was important. So I began testing the girl's image against those of people I had known who were connected to Hojo . . . and found a match almost instantly. 

"Listen," Zack was saying, "I've got to go, okay, guys? If I don't get to Lazard's office soon, he'll bust me all the way back to the ranks." 

"Sure," Reno said, and I nodded, still a bit preoccupied. 

Once Zack was gone, Reno swiveled his chair around to face me. "So other than the footage from the reactor, is there anything I can do you for, Vince?" 

"I need you to pull a couple of files for me," I said. 

"Just give me the names." 

"Aerith Gainsborough. And Gast Faremis."


	18. Chapter 18

**Zack**

Vincent was as difficult to read as Seph sometimes. I knew that something about Aerith's picture had bothered him, from the way he had stiffened, but I didn't know what, or why he'd asked about her father. It hadn't been just to make conversation, 'cause I'd long since figured out that he didn't _do_ that. 

And I couldn't stick around and ask about it because _Heidegger_ , of all people, had suddenly added a meeting to my schedule this morning. While I'd been eating breakfast. That was what I'd originally gone to find Reno to bitch about, because he and Cloud and Aerith were the only ones who would put up with me when I was in that kind of mood, and I didn't want to wake Spiky up—he wasn't fully enhanced yet, so he needed more sleep than I did. 

Heidegger's office was way up in the nosebleed zone—I mean, on the executive floors. It wasn't my favourite place to be. Especially since his secretary was a bitch and he always kept me waiting just to prove that he _could_. But he was the Head of Public Safety, and a member of the Board of Directors (which they wouldn't let Seph sit on in a million years), so we were stuck with him until we had an opportunity for someone to be accidentally-on-purpose too slow on bodyguard duty. 

Times like this, I really missed Lazard. The lower ranks had it easy, since those missions got funneled through Sephiroth. And me. 

I spent half an hour cooling my heels this time before he called me it, with the secretary giving me evil looks every few minutes as thought to say, _Don't you have somewhere else to be?_ Well, yeah, lady, I'd prefer to be just about _anywhere_ else. Like at the dentist's. Or cleaning toilets. 

When the door finally opened, I touched the Buster Sword before stepping inside, and mentally reviewed all the stuff that had come out of Nibelheim that I wasn't supposed to talk about. There was a lot of it. Jenova, Vincent, Seph's origins, Hojo, our plan to trash the labs . . . Basically anything that had happened in the last week or so that I didn't have a pre-scripted explanation for. Which was scary. 

I was kind of gratified to see that Heidegger's eyes had big purple pouchy areas under them. He must not have been sleeping much—probably about as much as a real SOLDIER, except that he wasn't enhanced. Served him right. Asshole. Lazard had been ten times the man Heidegger was, even though he'd been a traitor. And a civilian. I'd never really understood why they'd put an office drone in charge when they'd set up the Shinra, uh, something-something-something Infantry Enhanced Regiment. I never can remember the whole acronym (and we're not really infantry and smaller than most regiments, so it doesn't even make sense). Of course, Seph was a lot younger when SOLDIER had first been formed. Maybe they'd been afraid of what would happen if a teenager ended up in charge of the whole mess. Or maybe they'd just been scared of Seph at any age, after all the crap they'd let Hojo dump on him. Or the alternative had been Heidegger, and then he'd gotten here anyway. 

"Major Zack Fair, reporting." I did the fancy snap-to-attention-and-salute thing that Seph despised as a time-waster. Heidegger ran on flattery, though. 

"Gya-ha-ha-ha! At ease. Sit down, Major." 

I smiled sunnily. "Thanks, sir! Don't mind if I do." And then I started taking my sword harness off. Slowly. It's a bit of a production for an armed SOLDIER to take a seat anywhere, and I was going to milk it for all it was worth. 

Heidegger made a face like he'd bitten into a lemon, but he didn't stop me. Probably thought that countermanding his own orders would make him look like an idiot. Never mind that he didn't need any help with that. 

Eventually, I couldn't drag it out any more, though. I kept the smile plastered across my face as I sat down. "What do you have for me today, sir?" 

"Support duty with the regular army." 

I blinked. "Sir?" 

Heidegger guffawed again. "They're sweeping the plains between here and Kalm. There have been a lot of nasty surprises lately, and the President wants the monsters thinned out as much as possible. The troopers are capable of handling a few Kalm fangs, but there's a chance they'll trip over something worse. Like another king behemoth. If they do, handling it is your job." 

_Why me and not General Sephiroth?_ But really, I didn't have to ask. Either they wanted Seph on hand to save _their_ asses if anything happened, or whoever was running the main mission outranked a major, but not a general. I mean, infantry and SOLDIERs weren't technically in the same chain of command, but we usually pretended we were in the field because things got too complicated, otherwise. 

"Too bad Hojo says Sephiroth isn't fit for field duty," Heidegger added, and laughed again. "Noticed anything odd about him?" 

"Nope." _And I wouldn't tell you if I did._

"You didn't think suddenly bringing a trooper who appears to weigh ninety-eight pounds soaking wet into the SOLDIER program by overriding the requirements, and then choosing to mentor the boy himself, was odd?" Heidegger had a disgusted expression on his face. 

Oh, this was about _Cloud_. "Not at all, sir. Trooper Strife, as he was at the time, impressed us both favourably during the Nibelheim mission, and he passed all the requirements to enter SOLDIER except height—which we figure will fix itself over the next couple of years, since he's only sixteen and early mako treatments tend to cause a growth spurt anyway. As for mentoring him, I offered to do it myself, but the General figured if he signed his own name to the papers, the President would stop pestering him about taking on a student for the next couple of years." 

"And the man he transferred from Junon?" 

Cloud _and_ Vincent, then. And Heidegger's nose being out of joint because Sephiroth hadn't asked for approval. "I can't remember if that was where we actually picked him up, sir, but General Sephiroth felt that Vincent's potential was being wasted in the position they'd placed him in, and after seeing the man in action, I tend to agree." That story, we'd worked out in advance, so it came out easily. "You know we don't have enough independent operational teams to meet our needs right now. Plugging that gap means picking through the rankers to find people of exceptional potential that everyone else has been overlooking." It sounded good, anyway. 

"Hmph. And you both considered that enough of an excuse to be moving _my_ personnel around without permission. I see." 

I shrugged. "You would have to discuss that with General Sephiroth. He _is_ my immediate superior, sir." 

"I intend to talk to him," Heidegger growled. "As for you, get out of here. Get your mission file from my secretary, and go." 

I took my time putting my sword back on again, watching Heidegger's face gradually darken towards magenta as I did, and gave him a jaunty little wave as I stepped out the door. Well, that . . . hadn't been so bad, mostly. I mean, I'm not Reno—I don't enjoy messing with people for the sake of messing with them . . . but no one likes Heidegger. 

The secretary scrunched her face up when I asked for the mission file. Like she thought I smelled bad. I ignored that and took it from her, then began to leaf through it right there in front of her, so she could enjoy my bad-smelling self for a little longer. 

Okay, so. Meet at the staging area by the highway at eleven-hundred—I could do that. Eight hundred troops, which was too many for a joke but too few to really clean up the Kalm plains, so they'd probably just pulled anyone who didn't have a more pressing assignment so that they could put on a show for the President. Mission commander was a Colonel . . . Heidegger?! Oh, _double_ ugh. Not the man I'd just spoken to, obviously, but some cousin of his or something. Heidegger was big on nepotism. 

Well, that was life in SOLDIER for you. The colonel was probably going to be as much of an idiot as his cousin, but I'd grin and bear it, because I found that was usually the easiest way. And by this evening, it would all be over anyway. Until then, I'd endure. 

Colonel Heidegger looked like a piece of work from the first moment I met him. Shorter than Cloud, broad-shouldered, and so overweight I was surprised he hadn't been given a medical discharge years ago. And he was red in the face _all_ the time. He almost looked like some kind of oversized hedgehog pie. 

He didn't seem too impressed by me, either. "You're the SOLDIER who's been assigned to spectate this fiasco?" 

"Major Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class," I introduced myself. "Can I ask how we're going to be executing this mission?" 

"My men are going to form a skirmish line and move forward, shooting anything they see," the colonel said with a snort. "Which isn't likely to be much at this time of year. _You_ will remain with the trucks and wait until we're done. I would prefer not to have you here at all, but I was told that there had been unusual monsters sighted nearby recently." 

"Behemoths," I said, figuring that just the normal kind were bad enough that I didn't need to start mentioning exotic subspecies from the northern continent. "Four of them. General Sephiroth cleaned them up, but everyone seems to be worried about more of them popping up. I mean, normally four is a year's supply for this area, and having them all show up at once . . ." I shrugged. 

The colonel sniffed. "If Sephiroth exhausted the year's supply, then the rest of us should have nothing to worry about." 

I ended up playing poker with some of the people who were just along for the ride and not participating in the monster hunt: Colonel Heidegger's aide, a medic, and the driver who doubled as a just-in-case truck mechanic. Actually, I suck at poker. I can't wipe my face clean the way Seph can. Even Cloud's better at it. And so was the driver-mechanic. I was down three hundred gil by the time I had an excuse to quit the game. 

I just wish it had been a different excuse. 

The screams were so faint at first that I don't think anyone else heard them, but I threw down my cards and grabbed the Buster Sword right away. It was the first decent hand I'd gotten, too—full house, tens and eights. Oh, well. 

The comms station was inside one of the trucks. Good thing it had "REMOTE COMMUNICATIONS POINT 038" stenciled on the side, or it might have taken me forever to find it. 

I opened the back door without knocking, swung myself inside . . . and just barely avoided braining myself and catching my sword hilt on the doorframe, 'cause those trucks are made for _midgets_. "What's going on?" I asked sharply. 

Colonel Heidegger gave me what I think he meant to be an intimidating look. It was pretty pathetic compared to the chilly stare of a pissed-off General Sephiroth, though. "Nothing. One squad flushed out a large avian, that's all." 

I blinked. "A chocobo?" That was the only type of big bird you could find around here. Levrikons do look kind of like birds, but they aren't really. 

"No, Major, something flight-capable." That was one of the comms people. 

The colonel said something that would blister paint. "Fine. _Fine._ Get me my new gun, and then you're coming with me, Major whatever-your-name-is." 

"I believe it's 'Major Fair', sir," said the same comms person again. She also winked at me. Aerith would have beaten on me if I'd asked for her PHS number, though. 

"WHATEVER!" The colonel looked like he was about to pop a vein. 

Someone knocked on the truck's back door. "Got the colonel's gun here, sirs . . ." 

He didn't try to bring it inside, and I found out why a moment later: it wasn't a gun, it was a _cannon_. Or at least a bazooka or something. Really long barrel, and a backpack. And it had a jury-rigged look to it that just about screamed "Weapons Development Prototype". 

The colonel crouched down, got his arms into the straps, and lifted the whole thing with a grunt. "Get my chocobo," he snapped at the man who had brought the gun, who saluted and ran off. 

"So I get to walk?" I mean, I _could_ keep up with most chocobos, at least for a while, but it was pretty rude for this guy to assume that I'd just let him make me eat his bird's dust. 

"We only brought the one chocobo, and it can't carry me and you _and_ my gun. I hear you SOLDIERs are just as fast as the birdies, anyway." Colonel Heidegger offered me an ugly smile. 

_Asshole,_ I thought, and started to do stretches. This was wasting too much time, but I didn't know where to go, and anyway, the screams had stopped. 

I just hoped there was someone left to rescue when we got there. 

The chocobo arrived quickly enough, at least. An ordinary yellow bird, thickset, that _kweh_ 'd sullenly when it saw the colonel. You could just about hear it sighing as its handler got it down on its knees, and the colonel straddled it. Then we were off, with me running alongside the poor overworked 'bo. 

The skirmish line had gotten about three miles out while I'd been playing poker. We'd covered about one before I saw the zu. Another monster that shouldn't have been around here. I was just glad it wasn't nearly as nasty as the king behemoths. 

It seemed to be diving at something, which was a good sign as far as I was concerned. I'd studied up on the birds before going to Nibelheim, so I knew they didn't go in for dead food. And it was a good sign for another reason: you can't stab a flying monster with a sword very easily. Well, okay, Sephiroth would have jumped up and gotten in its face, but I wasn't him. 

I sped up, and so did the chocobo. Oh, well. While I was running, I considered my materia. I'd brought my usual kit, Ice-All in my sword and some curative and support stuff in my wristlet. How many shots I could take at it from the ground would depend on my mental strength. 

I didn't notice at first when the chocobo skidded to a stop behind me. I _did_ notice the loud _BANG!_ and several somethings streaking across the sky after the zu. Which tried to fly away, and then, when the rockets still seemed to be gaining, dove. 

Toward me. 

_Oh, shiiiiit!_

The bird pulled up at the last second. The missiles didn't. I had to dodge really, really fast and cut them out of the air with my sword. And _friendly fire_ is the worst swear word in any soldier's—or SOLDIER's—vocab. 

"Put that thing _away_!" I yelled at Colonel Heidegger in my best imitation of Seph's command voice. Which wasn't really very good, but hey. I didn't care about the rank thing anymore, either. I'd probably get pay docked or something, but right now, I was more focused on turning that stupid oversized bird into a zusicle. 

It's harder to focus a materia on a flying enemy than it is if you're dealing with something on the ground. Or, not _harder_ exactly, but it dodged in ways that I wasn't as used to. It took me two tries to nail a wing and bring the big bird down, but after that it was easy. I mean, a zu is bigger and stronger than a bagnadrana, but once you've got it down, it can't move very well, and it doesn't usually use its wind attack when it's only facing one enemy. So the Buster Sword and I had no trouble taking it out. 

The blood smelled like mako as much as it did like, well, _blood_. I hadn't noticed that with the bagnadrana, but there's always a note of mako in the under-Plate stink to start with. 

Another one that I was going to have to report to Seph. And I had a feeling he was going to be pissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main plot starts to engage again next chapter, I promise.


	19. Chapter 19

**Cloud**

"I've got to hand it to you, kid," Dane said. "You're coming along pretty fast." 

"For a scrawny little guy using a sword too heavy for him," I said wryly as I sat down on a bench—we'd just called a ten-minute break. 

My teacher waved that away. "Mako'll fix that faster than you think. You might want to start thinking about what kind of sword you want to settle on in the end, though. Whether you want a big sucker like the one Zack Fair hauls around, or a long, skinny, sharp one like the General prefers, or something else." 

"I . . . hadn't really . . . I thought it was only Firsts that got to pick out personal weapons." 

Dane snorted. "Firsts, people with special duties or special dispensation . . . I've never seen your roomie Gunner even lift a sword, although I sure wouldn't want to tangle with him. You're the General's personal student. I doubt he's going to want you carrying around some piece of mass-produced tin with a serial number stamped on the hilt." 

"You're carrying one." Which was true—Dane's sword was wider and a bit longer than mine, but it was still one of the standard types from the armoury. 

"Yeah, but I'm not special. Fair just stuck you with me because I'm short. You, though—either you'll make First pretty damned fast, or they're going to break you trying. The General can't have less than the best." 

_No pressure,_ I thought, but actually, I was starting to get used to it. It was just the price for being so close to Sephiroth. Everyone stared at you, and if you couldn't measure up, it was all over the tabloids the next day. And probably all over the Silver Elite fan-page, too. Even though Zack said that most of the stuff there was made-up. 

"I hear you went on a hunt in the slums last night," Dane continued. "How did it go?" 

I groaned. " _Please_ tell me Zack hasn't been spreading that story around already." 

Dane's grin was just nasty. "Oh- _ho_. So something did happen, then. Well, that settles it. You're coming out for a drink with the rest of us tonight, and you're going to tell us all about it." 

_Me and my big mouth,_ I thought. "I'm underage." 

Dane waved that away. "Those laws don't apply to SOLDIERs. You're usually back up here after you eat, right, given how training-crazy you are? I'll find you here, then." 

And he wouldn't take no for an answer when I tried to argue, either. And I didn't . . . I almost groaned again. I didn't have Sephiroth's permission to talk about the bagnadrana incident. I was going to have to find some way to ask him if I could. Before supper. Or hide in the room I shared with Vincent all evening . . . but I really didn't want to do that. I mean, I was a SOLDIER for life now, unless I did something really stupid. I needed to make more friends here than just Zack. Vincent wasn't really a friend—he was three or four times my age, and not much of a talker. And as for General Sephiroth . . . well, like Zack, I didn't really want to learn what Masamune tasted like, which was what I bet would happen if I claimed him as a friend. Anyway, Dane was a pretty good guy, and I knew I could do worse than to have him introduce me around. He'd already done it, a bit, when his friends turned up in the training room. 

I looked up as he clapped me on the shoulder. "'Bout time to get back to work, Spiky." 

"Yeah." I picked up my sword again and took my stance. Maybe in a couple of weeks, I'd feel confident enough to go down to the slums and hunt hedgehog pies on my own, without Zack lurking in the background. I mean, if they came at me one at a time, I could probably do it now, but I knew it was a bad idea to bet on that. 

Dane had finished his practice and gone on duty when my PHS went off. When I pulled it out of my pocket, there was a text message waiting: _Come to my office._ Sent by Sephiroth. 

Well, generals didn't have to say "please" when addressing Third Classes. I got my butt in gear and went. 

Somehow I wasn't surprised to find Zack and Vincent already there. _Strategy meeting, then._ I was getting almost used to that, too. Or at least I knew how everyone took their coffee. 

Vincent (splash of cream, no sugar) started it off. "What records we found show the bagnadrana appearing spontaneously." 

"Which I still don't get," Zack (enough cream and sugar to double the volume in the coffee cup and make him slightly hyper) said. 

"That part makes very little sense," Vincent admitted. "I've heard of it happening occasionally with monsters of dubious physicality—ghosts and the like—but not to a creature like that one." 

Sephiroth (black as a Nibel dragon's heart, or maybe just being not-picky about his food again) frowned. "Likewise." 

"My girlfriend would say that the Planet was trying to tell us something," Zack offered, and I rolled my eyes. _Um, Zack? The Planet doesn't talk._ And I couldn't imagine Aerith saying that it did. 

I don't think anyone else had any more idea what to say to Zack than I did, because there was a long silence that only ended when I coughed. 

"Um, can I have permission to tell the other SOLDIERs about the bagnadrana? Dane asked me to go out drinking tonight, and I . . . kind of . . ." I faltered to a stop because everyone was looking at me again and I was losing track of what I wanted to say. 

"I'm starting to doubt this connects back to Hojo," Sephiroth said. "By all means, tell them. In fact, ask them if they have any additional data points to add." 

"Thank you, sir," I said sincerely. 

After some quick status stuff about the raid on the Science Department—it could be pretty much summed up as _not yet, still getting the pieces into place_ —the meeting broke up, but I was stopped from leaving the room by a hand on my shoulder. 

"Strife. Close the door." Sephiroth was looking at me with a frown on his face. 

"Yes, sir." I closed it, then turned around and waited expectantly. _Regulation at-ease posture, right._ I'd never been alone with General Sephiroth for longer than it took for him to give me an errand, but he was my mentor now, and I'd have to get used to it. I did not, I told myself sternly, feel at _all_ like I was going to faint. I'd known the General personally for, uh, a little more than a week now? Enough that I should have been developing some immunity to the scary force of those mako-green eyes, even without Zack standing solidly behind me. But I guess there was still a bit left of me of the Cloud who had hung all those posters over his bed, because I _was_ getting a bit light-headed. _Breathe, Cloud, that's the way._

"I apologize for altering your status so abruptly without consulting you," Sephiroth said, not sounding at all apologetic. "However, it was . . . both personally and politically expedient." 

"Zack did his best to explain everything to me, sir." Although Zack's explanations usually came out as a bit of a scrambled mess. 

The General seemed to realize that too, because a smile touched the corners of his mouth, and he said, "Did he manage to make sense? In my experience, Zack is pathologically incapable of explaining anything unless he's in report mode." 

"Mostly, sir. He said you thought I had the potential to be a good SOLDIER if I worked at it, but that this was going to be sort of a joint mentorship because you don't have the time to teach me properly yourself, and the reason you signed the papers instead of him was mostly political." 

"That isn't a bad summation. I do intend to take on a part of your instruction eventually, but as Zack pointed out to me, I would be laughably bad at teaching the basics. There is one thing I intend to do immediately, however—with your permission." 

"You have it, sir. Of course." 

_Oops, wrong answer._ I could tell from the way the green eyes narrowed. _It's nearly the only tell you'll ever get from him before he goes ballistic,_ Zack had once warned me. "If this were trivial enough to wave away in that manner, Strife, I would not have bothered consulting you at all. I'm talking about accelerating your mako treatments. Your capacity and tolerance are high enough to make the standard full-month interval more cautious than necessary. I propose to halve it, as long as your medical test results remain acceptable. It will not be pleasant." 

I forced myself to swallow. The treatments weren't just about mako. I'd known that when I'd asked to be promoted into SOLDIER, because I'd already seen it in Zack. I'd known that whatever had caused Zack to hear Jenova's voice in Nibelheim would be in me—was in me now. And I'd agreed to it anyway. 

"I didn't enter the military because I thought it would be fun, sir. If you feel you need my permission, then you have it." 

"There are some documents that will require your signature." He knew exactly which pile they were on, and how many sheets. "Read them first," he added as he handed them to me. "Dismissed." 

When I glanced over them later, it was all the usual permissions and waiver stuff. Already filled in and just waiting for me to scribble my name at the end of each "I understand that . . ." paragraph. _Increased risk of hallucinations. Increased risk of psychological damage._ Never mind. I'd just have to handle it. 

General Sephiroth had stuck his neck out for me, if only by the width of a couple of strands of his fine, silvery hair. And I was going to keep my part of the bargain and make him proud by becoming the best SOLDIER I could. 

I went back up to the practice room after signing the papers. Dane wasn't there yet, so I did my stretches and drew my sword. I was going to have to see if I could get some time in one of the real Training Rooms soon—they were hardened so that you could use materia in there, and I needed to work on my spellcasting. 

"Ha! Told you he's a workaholic. How many hours a day do you practice, anyway, kid?" 

I put my sword up, managing not to nick my ear this time as I slid it into the scabbard on my back. "As many as I can. I was starting to wonder if you guys were going to show." 

Dane had three other guys that I knew slightly with him. Jackson was skinny and half a head taller than me, with really bright carroty orange hair and gold mako eyes. Renro was big and broad and didn't talk much. And Arnulf was so painfully average-looking that I might not have been able to remember his name if he hadn't had one blue eye and one green. It was his only distinguishing feature. Like me, they were all Third Classes, although they'd obviously been in SOLDIER for longer than a few days. 

The bar they took me to was possibly the most weirdly positioned business in Midgar. I mean, the entrance wasn't far from the Sector Three train station, but the bar itself hung down below the Plate like a slug on the underside of a leaf of lettuce. I never did find out what its name actually was—Dane and his friends called it The Dangle. It was definitely a place that catered to SOLDIERs, with sword stands at each table. And it was pretty full already, with at least two dozen pairs of mako eyes watching us as we hit the bottom of the stairs. 

"Don't worry about the bar bill," Dane said. "We'll be paying for you tonight." 

"Um . . . thanks?" Why hadn't anyone gone back to their own conversations or drinks? _Please let this not be another stupid hazing thing._ I didn't have Vincent or Zack here to handle it this time, and I knew I wasn't good enough to take on twenty or thirty other SOLDIERs. Especially not when half of them were Second Class. "Is there something going on?" 

"Kind of. Why don't we sit down, first?" 

I thought about that for half a second. Jackson and Renro were already behind me, so there was no way I was getting back up the stairs if they didn't want to let me. Either this was going to be fine, or I was already in trouble. "Okay." 

Dane grinned. "I'm starting to think the real reason the General picked you is that you're almost as paranoid as he is." 

I shrugged. I mean, what could I have said? 

Dane led us to an empty table in the middle of the room, and the bartender brought out five mugs and a pitcher of something that definitely didn't smell like beer. Or taste like it either, when I tried a cautious sip, then a larger mouthful. Kind of spicy and bitter and . . . _whoa_. My head swam for a few seconds before I pulled myself back together. 

"SOLDIER Special, and no, we don't know what they put in it either," Jackson said, with a wink. "Take it easy, though. We need you sober for a bit." 

"What for?" I asked, all my suspicions coming back full force. We were still the only ones drinking, although here and there, a few people were whispering. 

Dane took a long pull from his mug. "It's nothing bad," he said. "Just want to run some stuff by you, that's all, seeing as you're close to General Sephiroth. We'd ask Zack, but he doesn't have much time to go drinking these days. Rumour is, he'll be a general too, soon enough, or at least a colonel, and damned if they aren't giving him the work to prove it." 

"I don't know anything about that," I said. 

"Didn't figure you did. But you do know something. We all know you're invited to the secret conferences the General's been having. He's been acting really weird since he got back from that last mission of yours. I mean, he didn't used to be all that chummy even with Zack, and now he's taking students and holding four-man meetings in his office and working on something with the Turks." 

I didn't say anything. Jackson gave me an irritated look, but Dane half-smiled. "And you're not just blurting out whatever you know. That's good. That's really good, kid. Your worries are kind of misplaced, though. All of us here are loyal to the Silver General, or we would have gone with Genesis Rhapsodos when he left." 

"Or you might have stayed in Midgar because you were loyal to Shinra," I said, and several other men at nearby tables laughed. 

"There are a few of those around," Dane admitted. "But we didn't invite them here tonight. We know you can't tell us everything, either. Just . . . what you can." 

What I could. I sorted through the things I knew, trying to decide what (other than the stuff about the out-of-place monsters) I could safely say. 

"That last mission you mentioned was set up by Doctor Hojo to mess with General Sephiroth's head," I said at last. "The reactor at Nibelheim had mako pods in it that were full of these . . . Well, they used to be human once, but they weren't anymore. That was why there were more than the usual number of monster sightings up there. The General's really angry about what happened, and I think he might be thinking about starting some kind of fight with the Science Department." 

Everyone else at the table winced, and Jackson's nose wrinkled. "Ugh," he said eloquently, and drained his mug. "Everyone knows Hojo's an asshole. Guess the General's finally had enough." 

"Yeah," I said. "As for the four-man meetings, I _do_ have permission to talk about the reason the last couple were called . . ." And I went on to talk about out-of-place monsters, with every eye in the room fixed on me. 

When I was done, there was a brief silence, like a collective sigh. 

"We saw a behemoth the last day of my posting in Wutai," said a Second at the next table. "My whole squad had to beat on it for twenty minutes before it finally died." 

Other people chimed in with more sightings. Corel, Mideel, in the ocean off Junon, and one way up north near Icicle Inn. It seemed pretty random to me, except that I knew Midgar, Corel, Junon, and Wutai all had mako reactors, or were building them. I didn't know anything at all about Icicle Inn (except for Zack's malboro-hunt story) or Mideel, until Arnulf spoke up. 

"The Lifestream is really close to the surface in Mideel. When I was a kid, mako even got into the town water supply a couple of times, and you have to be careful about holes in the ground." 

"You're from Mideel? I didn't know that." 

Dane grinned. "Yeah, you're both a pair of bumpkins." 

"You're a find one to talk—you're from _Kalm_ ," Jackson said. It must have been the punchline to some kind of inside joke, because they all laughed. 

So I sat and drank with them and swapped all the usual kinds of stories you swap when you're in the army—I didn't have that many of my own, but they didn't seem to mind if I told Zack's instead—until the bar closed up at around three in the morning, and we all staggered back up the stairs to Plate level and along the streets. Finding the Shinra Building from anywhere on the Plate is the easiest thing in the world—I mean, you can't miss it. 

"Lotta troopers out tonight," Jackson said as we passed the third squad holding down a corner. 

"Maybe it's some kind of exercise," I said—I'd had more SOLDIER Specials than I probably should have, but the cold night air was starting to make them wear off. 

"Maybe." Dane was frowning, I noticed. It seemed like an overreaction. I mean, even if there was something wrong, these guys would have to be crazy to take on a bunch of SOLDIERs. And Dane was an officer, so he probably could have gotten some information out of them if he'd really wanted to. He never tried, though—just kept on walking, past larger and larger numbers of troopers, until we hit the side entrance to the Shinra Tower. 

Inside, there were more troopers, most of them clustered in the main elevator lobby. Not paying any attention to us, but there was someone standing in the middle of a little knot of them who didn't seem to belong somehow. I craned my neck, but I couldn't see past the wall of troopers until they got to the elevators. And then I caught a flash of pink. And green eyes and brown hair and a familiar face. 

_Aerith?_

There was a cordon of troopers between us and those elevators and, damn it, I didn't know what to do! I knew Zack's girlfriend didn't belong here, knew I had to find some way to get her out, but I couldn't . . . I needed help. This was personal business, not SOLDIER, so that help would have to come from Zack. 

_Get all the information you can,_ I told myself, and watched the numbers on the elevator blink from one floor to another. 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 11 . . . 34 . . . 67. 

Oh, hell. Wasn't that the Science Department? This could turn out to be really, really bad. I swallowed. Hopefully Zack would have some idea what to do, because I sure didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just imagine the ominous music coming up in the background as you read those last few paragraphs. ;)
> 
> (And yeah, I didn't want to use the Goblin's Bar, or whatever it's called. There's room in Midgar for multiple SOLDIER hangouts, anyway.)


	20. Chapter 20

**Sephiroth**

It would have been pleasant to have two consecutive mornings where I wasn't woken before dawn by the bleat of a PHS, but it appeared that, once again, I had failed to be so fortunate. It took all of my self-control not to crush the device in my hand as I picked it up. 

"What?" I growled. 

"We have a Situation on the sixty-seventh with Hewley's Puppy. If you can't defuse it, we're going to have to shoot him." 

Veld seldom called me even during the day, which suggested that this was more than just Zack getting caught in a drunken prank. 

"On my way," I said tersely, and terminated the call, mind already considering what I had on me and what I might need to grab. I was clothed from the waist down in a pair of First Class uniform trousers. My boots weren't quick to put on, and I wasn't leaving the building, so best not to bother. I pulled on my gloves, stuffed my keycard in my pocket, clasped my materia wristlet on, and grabbed Masamune from her stand as I flew out the door, because if I couldn't talk Zack down, I might have to fight him. 

At full speed, I could climb the fire stairs faster than the elevator could ascend, so that was the way I went. If there had been functioning cameras inside that stairwell, all they would have seen was a blur. And when I kicked the door to the sixty-seventh floor open, it came right off its hinges and slammed to the floor with a large dent in it. 

The noise made a few eyes flick briefly in my direction—Veld's, over near the elevators, and those of a desperate-looking Cloud Strife—but for the most part, everyone's attention remained centered on the drama up front, where Zack was confronting a trio of junior Turks. He had the Buster Sword out, and they were pointing various weapons at him as well. 

"I'm sorry, but no matter what you say, Major, we still can't let you through," one of the Turks said. "The Science Department is off-limits right now to any personnel not belonging to that department, unless Doctor Hojo requests their presence specifically. And you haven't been requested." 

"Shut up!" Zack snapped, and repositioned his feet slightly. I recognized the shift in stance, and moved before he could, smashing Masamune, still in her sheath, down on his forearms. The force I applied wasn't quite enough to break bone, but it did break his grip on the Buster, sending it to the floor. Before he could move to retrieve it, I grabbed him in a head-lock. "Let me go! Seph!" He struggled wildly, but I wasn't about to allow him to break loose, and I was the stronger, even though Zack had more muscle. 

"Strife, get his sword," I ordered. The young Third Class with the chocobo hair nodded and went to scoop it up. I could tell it was a strain from the way he moved, but he had the good sense to prop the flat against his shoulder for better distribution of the weight. I turned to face the Turks Zack had been trying to fight, with my second-in-command's head still clamped under my arm. "I apologize for this. I will discipline Major Fair appropriately." 

"Thank you, General." That was Veld, speaking from behind me. "If you can find out what triggered this . . ." 

"I'll pass the information on to your department," I agreed, and began to propel Zack towards the stairs, with Cloud trailing along behind. 

I hauled SOLDIER's next-most-senior officer down three flights before I released him from the headlock, sending him staggering into the wall on a mid-flight landing. 

"Tell me, Zack, do you realize what you've done?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "Whose attention you may have attracted? If we have to postpone our plans—" 

"They kidnapped Aerith," Zack said, giving me a mulish look. 

It took me a moment to remember that was his girlfriend's name. 

"I'm sorry, sir." Strife spoke up unexpectedly, although he was staring at my bare feet. "I was the one who told him. I didn't expect him to just rush in like this. I saw her with a bunch of troopers on the ground floor as I was coming back from the bar." 

"And you're certain of who you saw?" I asked. 

"Yes, sir. Unless she has a twin sis—Oh my god, Tifa!" 

I sighed. "Strife, calm yourself and at least attempt to report coherently." It wasn't unusual for new enlistees to collapse into confusion like this, but Cloud had been a trooper for more than a year and should have had some idea of what he was doing. 

"There isn't much else to report, sir. It was Aerith's place that Tifa was staying at, that's all." He was fishing one-handed through his pockets as he spoke, and made a triumphant noise as he pulled out his PHS. 

"Don't," I told him. "If she hasn't contacted you, then either she doesn't yet know anything is wrong, in which case we should leave her to get a full night's sleep, or she is being held somewhere without access to communications. As for this girl Aerith, I doubt she's in much danger today. Hojo usually prefers to observe his specimens for a while before doing anything to them. Do you have any idea _why_ they would have taken her? Either of you?" I began moving again, grabbing Zack by the arm and towing him after me when he seemed disinclined to come on his own. 

Zack shook his head. "I don't know, but the higher-ups have had some kind of interest in her for a while. Tseng's been trying to recruit her for Shinra for _years_." 

And yet her abduction had been entrusted to the regular army. Odd, if the Turks had already known where to find her. Or perhaps Hojo had noticed that Veld and I were no longer at odds, and wanted to avoid any interference from me. "Is there anything else unusual about her? At all?" 

"She grows flowers," Cloud said. Which, for a moment, seemed irrelevant, until I remembered that the girl lived in the slums. Polluted soil, polluted air, very little sunlight. If she could raise flowers under those conditions, she did have an unusual ability that might have implications for agriculture and the food supply, but I couldn't see Hojo taking any interest in _that_. It was far too pedestrian for him. 

"Vince knows something about her, I think," Zack said. "Or at least guesses something. He acted kind of weird when he saw the picture of her I have on my phone. And, uh, Seph? Could you let go of my wrist? Please?" 

"Are you going to behave yourself?" I asked in return. 

"Yeah. I . . . uh . . . I'm sorry, okay. For going off half-cocked. I should have known you would be willing to help." 

I knew better than to tell him the truth. That I was still weighing the advantages and disadvantages of rescuing this girl of his. Abandoning a comrade in enemy territory due to necessity was nothing I hadn't done before. Although it had always left a foul taste in my mouth. 

Zack had been in Wutai, and I knew he understood it wasn't always possible to make things come out right, but he had too many of his emotions caught up in this. I would have a hard time convincing him to even hold off for one day. If I abandoned the girl, he would turn on me, and possibly take Strife with him. He might even go to Hojo and attempt to trade what he knew about our activities in Nibelheim for the girl's release. That was something I had to avoid at all costs. So it appeared that not rescuing the girl was also out of the question. 

I let go of Zack's wrist. "Give him his sword back, Strife. And call Vincent. Tell him to meet us at my quarters." We could have gone to my office, which was, in fact, closer, but I was tired and intended to go back to bed as soon as we'd worked out a viable plan. 

If Zack hadn't already made such a fool of himself, leaking her location to the Turks might have been sufficient. Depending on why Tseng had been focusing on recruiting her rather than capturing her, but given how diligent Veld's second-in-command normally was in the execution of his duties, I doubted he had made the choice arbitrarily. There had to be more to this girl than just a green thumb. 

We climbed down the remaining flights of stairs in silence. Zack seemed especially subdued, and it was doubtless petty of me to be hoping that he was kicking himself over and over again for being such a fool . . . but just then I felt very petty. My genetic inheritance from Hojo, perhaps. 

Vincent was waiting outside my quarters, as I'd told Strife to request of him, and followed us inside when I opened the door. It would have been a great deal more pleasant to hold this conversation in the lounge down the hall, but like most other rooms in the building, the Turks had that space bugged, and I didn't trust Veld completely. Not yet. Possibly not ever. 

I returned Masamune to her stand and went to sit on the unmade bed. Vincent chose a section of wall near the desk to hold up, folding his arms. Zack and Cloud both hovered by the door, looking uncomfortable. 

"I'm going to make this as brief as I can," I said. "Vincent, what was it that struck you about Zack's photograph of Aerith Gainsborough?" 

"She bears a strong resemblance, at least from certain angles and when wearing certain expressions, to Gast Faremis. However, I was unable to determine whether a relationship exists, as Gast's file ends abruptly after he defected from Shinra twenty years ago, and Miss Gainsborough's appears to have been misplaced. Under the circumstances, I expect Tseng hid her half of the information for his own reasons." 

Zack blinked. "Who was this Gast guy, anyway?" 

"Hojo's predecessor as head of the Science Department," I said. "His research specialty was the biology and history of the Cetra, commonly known as 'Ancients'—what is it, Zack?" 

"I think," Zack said slowly, "I _think_ Aerith told me once that her real mother was one of those 'Cetra'. Or some word like it. I just ignored it, because I didn't understand." 

"Mrs. Gainsborough isn't her real mom?" Cloud asked. 

Zack shook his head. "Her real mom died when she was little. At one of the train stations in the slums—she doesn't remember it clearly enough to know which one, but it was probably Seven Lower." 

I was half-ignoring them as a number of puzzle pieces inside my head, including some I hadn't known were involved in this at all, came together with a firm _click_. Everything, right down to the timing of the kidnapping, now made almost too much sense. Of course, if the girl was a Cetra, she would have a green thumb, because the Cetra could speak to the Planet. Of course. 

"Vincent," I said. "As soon as you're able to contact Veld, tell him that we're moving up the timetable to this coming evening, and I don't care what he has to do to pull that off. The primary objective is to rescue Aerith Gainsborough and get her out of Midgar. Secondary is to make off with the Science Department's research records." 

Vincent nodded. Zack and Cloud both smiled. 

"Dismissed," I added, and rubbed wearily at my forehead. 

The door opened. The door clicked shut. And a gravelly voice asked, "Are you all right?" 

Vincent hadn't moved from his place against the wall. Why hadn't I noticed that? I hadn't been looking at him, certainly, but my hearing . . . 

There was one heartbeat in this room. My own. Something in what had been done to Vincent had reduced his heart to inaudibility, if it still beat at all. He had said that Hojo had shot him in the chest . . . 

"Why do you ask?" I countered. 

"Your expressions often resemble a minimalized version of Lucrecia's. When Zack mentioned Aerith's real mother, you had a look that, on her, would have meant that her data had just fit together in a way that invalidated her theory." 

"It would be more accurate in this case to say that everything came together to form an explanation that I didn't like," I admitted. 

Vincent didn't say anything. He just waited. And . . . perhaps it wasn't a bad idea to lay this out in front of him and let him probe it for gaps, as I might have used Angeal or Genesis as a sounding board in the old days. It was one of the things that Zack, inexperienced as he was, had a difficult time doing for me. 

"According to some previous ramblings on Zack's part, Aerith Gainsborough is a year younger than he is, so I would have been eight years old at the time of her birth. That was the year when Hojo began emphasizing military training in his treatment of me. That had always been part of my regimen, but up to that point it had been . . . somewhat half-hearted. As though he had been ordered to do it, but the future he, personally, had envisioned for me until that year lay elsewhere. My conclusion is that it was Aerith, or more likely her mother, who finally convinced him that Jenova was not a Cetra, or at least not a normal one, and that therefore I might be unsuitable for whatever plan he had in mind when he created me in the first place. Nibelheim must have been his last attempt at using me for that purpose, whatever it was." 

"And then the girl gets kidnapped only days after you get back," Vincent finished. "You're right—it fits together. Unpleasantly." 

"Ironic that, in the end, we were all failures," I said, with a glance at the picture beside the door. 

"Only if you insist on judging your fitness by what Hojo wants." 

I shrugged. "He raised me. It's inevitable that my worldview would be tainted by his, little though I might want it to be." I pushed myself a bit further back on the bed so that I could put my back to the wall, appreciating its solidity. "Not all that long before the Nibelheim mission came up, I told Zack that I was considering leaving Shinra, but if Genesis and Angeal hadn't left first, it would never have occurred to me to do so. It was always treated as a matter of course that I would serve Shinra until I died. I wonder, sometimes, what other blind spots have been intentionally trained into me." 

Vincent grunted. "I was about Cloud's age when I joined the Turks. It took me six months to figure out that the only way I'd ever leave again was in a coffin—the idea that we would be killed by our own people to keep any secrets from leaking out just didn't occur to me. We all have blind spots. Yours are just distributed a bit differently than the average." 

"I wonder sometimes whether, if it were possible to scrape away everything Hojo did to me, there would be anything underneath at all. Other than Jenova." 

"For what it's worth, you seem normal to me, or at least as normal as I would expect given a combination of high intelligence and your background. You're hardened to suffering, but you're not a sadist like Hojo. And I haven't yet caught you doing anything bizarre like wandering through the Shinra Building naked, trying to breed pet Kalm fangs, slaughtering random people because they happen to be wearing orange, or insisting that every member of SOLDIER be issued three party hats and a kipper." 

"I would be more reassured if I thought any of those examples were random." Although I wasn't sure what had told me otherwise. Something in his tone. 

"You're the one having an existential crisis at three o'clock in the morning _without_ getting drunk first." 

"You can go back to bed, if you would prefer." 

"I think I've already slept enough." Vincent's tone was dry. 

"Nevertheless—three party hats and a _kipper_?" Embarrassing to admit, but that was the thing I was most curious about. I could imagine circumstances that might lead to any of his other examples of strange behaviour, but not that one. 

"When I was just getting started with the Turks, Veld's predecessor's predecessor snapped due to excessive stress. It was . . . an interesting morning. And I have to admit that no one ever did manage to explain where a man from Mideel would ever have encountered a kipper before." 

I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I shook my head. "I sometimes think that if they dump any more paperwork on me, I may end up going that way myself. Except more violently." 

"Hm." 

The room was quiet for a bit after that. I didn't mind. 

"I don't think it's a binary choice, you know," Vincent said suddenly. "Between human and monster. Or maybe I should say that I can't _accept_ that it's only possible to be one of those things, with no third option. If that actually turned out to be the case, I'd have to put Cerberus to my head and pull the trigger. And hope that that would be enough to kill me." 

_We're the same._ It wasn't the first time that the thought had occurred to me. Was it odd for me to take comfort from it? 

"If I start ordering party hats and kippers, I hope you'll do as much to put me out of my misery," I said, and Vincent snorted, but his tone was serious as he spoke again. 

"And if Chaos gets loose and I'm unable to return it to confinement . . ." 

"I'll tear the materia out of your chest by whatever means necessary." 

Our eyes met and held, and we both nodded the least amount. Promises made, pact formed. And we both knew that no part of it had been a joke. Except the kippers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Seph—since Angeal and Genesis abandoned him, he's willing to think the worst of anyone, even Zack. And having to make hard command decisions in Wutai didn't do him any favours, either. (In other words, I've concluded that this chapter may be just a tad unnecessarily harsh on Zack, but I nevertheless decline to revise it.)


	21. Chapter 21

**Zack**

I went through the entire day like a zombie. I'm not sure I ever spoke to anyone, and there's a good chance I didn't make sense if I did. Really, I'm surprised no one decided I needed to be carted off to Medical. Or maybe someone did, and Seph stopped them. _He_ wasn't bothered by what was going on, as far as I could tell. Of course, it wasn't _his_ girlfriend that Hojo had caught. Vince was off with the Turks again, setting up things for tonight. Or at least, I hoped that was what he was doing, because if it turned out he was being as cold-blooded about this as Seph, I would probably scream and start shaking him. Although he probably would have been. Cold-blooded, that was. Turks usually are, and Vince didn't seem to have lost that even after spending twenty years in a box. 

I didn't even try to look in on Spiky. He was probably training his butt off trying to get ready. Of course, there was a limit to what you could learn (or beat into your body) in one day. I hoped he'd have the sense not to tire himself out too much. 

In the end, I went outside for a run around the edge of the Plate. Hadn't done that in a couple of years, since Angeal had assigned it to me as punishment for a prank Reno and I had pulled on Lazard, and I wouldn't say it made me feel _better_ , exactly, but it kept me occupied somewhere that I couldn't do anything too dumb. I ate lunch at a diner somewhere near the edge of Sector 6 and I guess I must have said something intelligible to the woman behind the counter, because she served me a burger and fries and not, say, pierogi pizza with a side of sauerkraut. 

By the time I'd made the full round of all eight Sectors, it was mid-afternoon, and I'd come to enough to realize I was technically AWOL—although they do give Firsts a lot of wiggle room—and that maybe exhausting myself right before a strenuous mission wasn't the brightest thing I could have done. Even if mako enhancement lets one hour's rest do the work of four. 

I crept back into the Tower and asked the elevator for the fiftieth floor, and Seph's and my offices. When I was about halfway up, I had a sudden audio lucie, like I was trapped inside a radio that was pouring out static. It was a bit scary, because usually hallucinations aren't that loud. Good thing it only lasted a few seconds. I put it down to stress. 

Seph was still grinding away at his paperwork—it looked like budget request forms this time. Excruciating stuff at the best of times, but he was somehow managing to concentrate. If I'd known him even a little less well, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell he was keyed up for a mission, just a little more tense, a little more alert. 

He looked up as I closed his office door, and said flatly, "The power will go out roughly an hour after midnight. Multiple Resistance groups will be taking advantage of that. Veld and I have tweaked the emergency invasion plan to make the Turks solely responsible for the safety of the major executives, so none of them will be leaving the residential floors. SOLDIER will be sweeping the building in squads. I have reserved the topmost floors for us personally, and given what sometimes escapes from the labs I doubt anyone will question that, but go to the assembly on the fifty-ninth first. The most likely complication is that Hojo will be working late again, in which case . . ." Seph didn't say it, but his tiny smile was chilling. 

"Do you really think we'll get away with it?" I didn't care whether or not we got away clean—I wasn't leaving Aerith there no matter what—but Seph . . . 

"In the absence of hostile witnesses, we can tell whatever story we want, and they will have no way of proving that what we describe was not what happened." 

"What if one of the lab techs is the one working late?" 

The look Seph gave me was . . . disappointed. Maybe even a bit disgusted. I swallowed. I knew missions like that existed, where you had to make sure there were no survivors, but I'd never gotten one, and Angeal had refused the only one they'd offered him while I'd been his student. I'd never thought about who'd ended up doing it instead. Maybe I'd been subconsciously hoping they'd dumped it on the Turks. 

"Go get some rest, Zack," was all he said, though. "Cast Sleepel on yourself if you have to, since I doubt you got much sleep last night. I'll send Strife to wake you if you fail to resurface on your own." 

"Thanks," I muttered. And got out of there. 

I did end up Sleepeling myself, but not until after supper. That got me about five hours of rest before it wore off. Then I got dressed, and spent an hour tidying up my apartment, because it was something to _do_. If the place really was bugged, as Seph suspected, I'd just confused whoever was monitoring me all to hell. The Turks would destroy the footage, anyway, and I had the "my girlfriend's missing" excuse to fall back on for any weird behaviour. 

I really, really wished now that I hadn't gone to the Science Department the moment Cloud had dropped his verbal bomb in my lap, but there was nothing I could do to fix that now. I had to move forward from where I was at. 

I ended up sitting cross-legged on the floor in my living room, polishing the Buster Sword. It was something I did sometimes anyway, especially before a mission. 

I hoped I didn't have to use it tonight. 

It was 1:08 when the lights went out. I forced myself not to do anything that would make it look like I was overreacting to a power outage. Three more minutes. Then my PHS blatted the emergency alarm ringtone, and I pulled it out to see, _Assemble armed on 59th floor._ From Sephiroth, of course. 

That meant we were in business, so I stood up, put the Buster Sword in place, and stampeded. 

There were a lot of SOLDIER boots in the stairwell, and a lot of cursing as people fumbled their way upwards by the dim emergency lights. 

"Zack! Hey!" It took me a moment to recognize Kunsel, who was wearing his helmet, wristlet, sword harness, and boots over pajamas printed with goofy cartoon chocobos. At any other time, I would have teased him. "Any idea what's going on?" 

I shook my head. "I got the same message from Seph as everyone else. Guaranteed it isn't just a power outage, though. Or an evacuation—they'd have set off the real alarms for that, not just paged us. They want people to stay in their rooms, I guess. So . . . an intruder sweep?" I hoped that string of logic held together. 

"Maybe. Makes sense, anyway. Or hostages or something." 

"Ugh. I hope not." If one of the rebel groups Veld had roped in got to the executive residential floor . . . but that was supposed to be the Turks' problem. 

Another burst-of-static sound, not as loud as the one that had attacked me in the elevator earlier, scraped across my mind. I figured it was a harmonic from all the tromping boots. 

The door to the fifty-ninth was propped open when we got up there, and Seph was waiting, along with a small batch of SOLDIERs who had already been awake, for whatever reason. I went over to him while the others started dividing themselves automatically into squads. 

The first thing Seph did was hand me a comm earpiece that would let me listen in on whatever was on the building's security channels without putting down my sword to pull out my PHS. I grimaced—the damned things were distracting, and I hated them—but I stuck it in my ear anyway. Seph was already wearing one. 

Vince was leaning against the wall not too far away, and I don't know how I'd failed to notice him when I'd first gotten here. He was wearing his old clothes, the black and red ones we'd found him with in the coffin, although he still had his hair properly tied back and that hand cannon stuck to his leg rather than the smaller gun he'd been carrying in Nibelheim. He wasn't the only one here in civvies, and at least his were relatively practical. Unlike Kunsel's chocobo pajamas, or the stockings, garter belt, and black lace panties that one of the Thirds had on. Which told me more than I'd ever wanted to know about that guy's hobbies. 

Cloud was among the last people to show, panting, but then he'd only had the one set of mako shots so far, so it was actually kind of impressive that he wasn't dead last. And he didn't stop moving until he was standing at Seph's elbow. 

We had ten SOLDIER squads lined up in front of us—everyone stationed in Midgar and not on a mission elsewhere right now. That should have meant a bit over a hundred SOLDIERs, but there were a few guys who must not have been in the building, or maybe they were in Medical or something . . . Anyway, we had ninety-seven people if you included Seph, me, Vince, and Cloud. 

I half-listened while Seph sent one squad to the stairs, six more to each block of ten floors above Plate level, told one to stay here in reserve, and finally sent the other two to sweep the sub-Plate levels inside the main pillar. And I tried to half-listen to the earpiece at the same time. That got me a few cryptic Turk messages and some trooper stuff . . . including one report with gunshots in the background. I glanced at Seph and touched my earpiece, and he nodded fractionally—he'd heard it too. 

Seph waited until all the other squads were gone before leading the three of us over to the stairs and beginning a rapid climb upward. They'd been talking about getting rid of the last ten floors of fire stairs and blocking off the doors for "security reasons" for a while now, but no one had actually done anything about it. I wondered if Seph's mad dash up to the labs to stop me would be the final nudge they needed. 

As we reached the still-busted door to the sixty-seventh floor, Seph gestured to Vince, who pulled out his hand cannon, flattened himself against the wall, and then peered cautiously through the opening. After a moment, he stepped out, gun tracking across the visible space. 

"Clear," he said, a bare breath of sound. "Sounds like there's a dog or something on the other side of the doors, though." 

I couldn't tell, but that was mostly because of the crap coming through the earpiece. I would have sworn that the last time I'd had to wear one, it hadn't been so static-y. Maybe this one was defective. 

Seph drew Masamune and cut the door to the inner lab area off its hinges, and, well, Vince had been half-right. What came out had four legs, but it wasn't a dog. More like half a one, with something that looked almost like half of a human being grafted to its back. 

Another swing of Masamune, and it was gone in a splash of blood and guts. Seph took the time to cut the head off too, and as it rolled to a stop near my boot, I saw it wasn't human after all. It was closer than most monsters, with eyes and mouth of the right sizes and in the right places, but there was no nose, and the skin was green-brown and warty. 

"Hojo must have combined a dragon rider with a guard hound," Seph muttered. "Be careful. There will be more creatures like this, and some of them may not be as easy to deal with." 

Ugh, the thought of _more_ things like that, and _worse_ ones made my stomach churn. Normal monsters are ugly and nasty, but they didn't feel unnatural in the way that . . . hybrid thing . . . had. And my stomach flipped again as I thought of what Hojo might have been doing to Aerith this very moment. 

"Zack, stay on my right. Strife, behind us. Vincent, guard our line of retreat." 

Which was all standard enough: weakest member in the middle, Seph's and my sword hands clear to cut, and someone competent keeping an eye on our way out. We followed that setup as we moved forward into the darkened lab. I was hearing a lot more babble and shooting over the earpiece—some troopers on the fifth floor and the squad we'd sent to help out on the twenties, it sounded like. Fifth floor was just ordinary offices for the propag—er, _marketing_ department, and I didn't think anyone would care much about people shooting holes in some brochures. Twenties were the last few floors of low-level offices, the cafeteria, and SOLDIER housing. Awful to search room by room for terrorists, but there wasn't anything really sensitive there, either. The only important thing in the floors in between was the Turks' office level, and Reno had told me about some of the booby traps in there, once upon a time. 

Seph led us along a narrow hallway that was barely wide enough for him and me to fit in side by side. _Cells,_ I remembered, dredging up the map of the level that he'd drawn for us. Well, it was probably the right place to look. If Aerith was okay, that was where she would be. 

I was hearing . . . growling sounds. And splatting sounds and impact sounds and something being mauled by an animal and several creatures panting for breath. I looked pleadingly at Seph. He scowled, but he also nodded and gestured forward with Masamune. 

We stepped up the pace, abandoning stealth as we rounded a corner. And what we found on the other side was a mess. A huge red-purple-grey _thing_ that looked like it had been put together out of spare parts, a dozen giant yellow beetles, a reddish-orange dog-cat-thing that looked vaguely familiar, and Cloud's friend Tifa were all mixing it up in the dead-end space at the end of the hall. It looked like Tifa was trying to keep Purple and the bugs out of one of the cells, and the dog-cat-thing must not have like Purple much either, because it had latched onto one of the patchwork monster's arms with its jaws. 

How Seph managed to swing a sword like his in a confined space like that without hitting anything he didn't want to hit, I have no idea. I was having enough trouble with the significantly shorter Buster Sword, trying to pin down the scuttling bugs. They just didn't want to die, and neither did Purple, even though Seph was carving big chunks off it. 

Then a gun roared from behind us and blasted a hole the size of my fist straight through Purple, and Masamune came down one last time. Purple collapsed, and when it did, all the bugs flipped belly-up on the floor. 

That left only the red-orange creature with the beads and feathers in its mane. It and Seph were eyeing each other dubiously. 

Wait a minute . . . Beads and feathers . . . and it was wearing anklets, too . . . Some information and a picture from a storybook my mom had read to me as a kid clicked together in my head, and I held up my arm to block Seph. "Wait! That creature . . . he's a person, I think." 

Seph shot me an incredulous look. 

"It's true! They only live near Cosmo Canyon these days, but there used to be some near Gongaga, too. And if the stories are true, he probably understands every word we're saying." 

"It isn't as though you're talking about anything complicated," the creature said, tilting his head to one side in a way that almost reminded me of Seph. "My name is Nanaki. And if you intend to stuff me back into one of those cages, I will fight you with everything I have." 

Seph whipped Purple's gore off Masamune with two habitual gestures and raised the sword to its resting position, point up and back. "We have no such intention. Although it may be difficult to get you out of the building." 

"We'll worry about that later," I said. "Right now, we have to find Aerith." 

"She's in there," Tifa said, pointing at the endmost cell on the left. She sounded very tired. "They took her away earlier. I don't know what they did, but she . . . isn't well." 

"What? No!" I ran for the cell door, stumbling over evaporating monster parts. The door was closed, but with the power out, the keycard locks didn't work, and it only took me a couple of seconds to force it open. 

Aerith was sitting on the edge of a bed, face pale, but she was smiling at me as I stepped inside. "Zack! I . . . I'm glad you're here, and I'm sorry." 

"Babe, you have nothing to be sorry for." I sat down beside her and hugged her—y'know, just to make sure she was real. 

"Except destroying your career," she said. 

It was a relief to be able to laugh that off. "No, the cameras went out with the power, we've got rebel groups loose in the building, and not only is General Sephiroth in on this—he's right outside in the hall, by the way—but all the Turks are, too. No one is ever gonna figure out who broke you out. But we need to get a move-on before Seph gets too pissed off at me for wasting time. You're okay, right? You can walk?" 

"I think so," Aerith said. "I . . . do feel weak, though. They injected me with something, and I think I'm allergic to it." She made a face as she extended her left arm. It didn't look good—skin slightly greyish, with red, inflamed veins running up and down it. "It hasn't spread much past my elbow. Yet." 

I tried a Cure, then an Esuna. The purification spell seemed to help a bit, chasing the odd colours back down toward her elbow, but even when I cast it a couple of times more, it didn't quite heal completely. 

"Lean on Tifa if you feel too unsteady," I told Aerith, helping her up. "Cloud can take you to the stairs, and you can wait for us there while we finish up the other thing we ca—" 

A thundering blast of static pretty much hit me over the head as we stepped out of the cell, and for a moment, I couldn't think. Then it was gone again. 

In the hall, Sephiroth's eyes had widened slightly, and his right hand twitched upward by a couple of inches. _Not good,_ I realized. 

"Did anyone else just hear something?" I phrased the question the most neutral way I could. Hoping that I was wrong. 

"Kind of like radio static?" Cloud asked. "A bit. I thought it was just one of those hallucinations they warn you about before your first mako shot." _Uh-oh._

"There was no such sound," Nanaki said, and Vincent shook his head. 

Three SOLDIERs heard it, but an enhanced non-SOLDIER and a . . . person with very acute ordinary hearing . . . didn't. 

"Jenova," Seph said. "Or rather, someone with no knowledge of what he was doing trying to make use of her abilities, but without her brain directing it. Hence, the transmission was not coherent." 

"Hojo," Vince finished, his voice almost a growl. 

After I'd seen Seph nearly go crazy in Nibelheim, I'd thought things couldn't get much worse on that front. 

I'd been wrong. 

This was worse.


	22. Chapter 22

**Cloud**

"Are you okay?" I asked Tifa quietly. 

"Just tired. I didn't dare sleep because I was afraid something was going to happen." 

"Ugh. Yeah, I know how that one works." 

Tifa and Aerith and the red critter—Nanaki—were all following along behind me. I just hoped I was going the right way. Having to go back and find Zack or Vincent or the General would be beyond embarrassing. Especially given that I had studied those floor plans. 

"Do you have any idea how we're going to get out of here?" Tifa asked suddenly, and I had to shake my head. 

"The original plan involved the emergency ladders in the elevator shafts, I think, but that was when we thought it would just be Aerith and she'd be okay. If the General has a backup plan, he didn't mention it where I could hear." And I couldn't think of what kind of backup plan could account for a Nanaki, anyway. Unless it was a straight-up bluff: put a collar and a leash on him and walk him out the front door. _Or dye him black and pretend he's a guard hound._ I bit my lower lip to keep from snickering, although . . . there was a guard hound kennel down in the sub-Plate levels. Cleaning it was a common punishment detail for troopers—I'd had to do it myself a couple of times. If Zack could pass off a dyed Nanaki to the troopers running the place as setup for a prank, that might actually work for a couple of days while the heat died down. If Nanaki could be made to go along with it. 

"Don't worry too much about it, though," I added. "If Sephiroth hasn't come up with something already, he will have by the time we leave the floor. It's part of what he _does_." 

"You have a lot of confidence in him," Nanaki was saying as we crossed over the door Sephiroth had cut to bits and re-entered the lobby. The dragon rider/guard hound monster had evaporated, leaving behind the scythe that it hadn't even had a chance to use. 

I shrugged. "Why wouldn't I? He's strong and smart and he doesn't abandon people." Sephiroth was the one who, when our truck had been attacked on the way to Nibelheim, had gotten out and dealt with the monsters and recovered what was left of the driver's body. I'd caught a glimpse of his face when he'd been doing that, and he'd been angry. Incandescently angry, I knew now, since I'd been able to tell even though back then I hadn't spent all that much time watching him. And there were all the stories Zack had told me. 

"Then I suppose I have no choice but to trust him as well." Nanaki sat down by the open doorway to the stairs (the General was really hard on doors—did they take the replacement costs out of his paycheck?) and curled his tail around his feet. There was a little flame burning at the end of that tail, instead of the tuft of fur I'd expected. Really weird. 

Tifa helped Aerith settle herself against the wall beside him. That left the two of us standing side by side, scanning the area. I hoped more monsters didn't pop out. 

"What happened exactly?" I asked her. "I mean, we only knew you were up here because I saw Aerith in the lobby. It was just pure luck." 

"I'm still not sure," Tifa admitted. "We'd just finished supper, and Aerith and I were helping Mrs. Gainsborough do the dishes, when a bunch of Shinra troopers knocked the door down and burst in. I tried to fight, so they could get away, but they all had guns. I guess that's why they took me, too, because it was really just Aerith that they wanted. Or that's what they said. 'Orders from President Shinra himself,' or something like that." 

Ugh, that didn't sound good. I wondered if Sephiroth knew. 

"Tseng must be beside himself," Aerith said. "Poor man. He was always asking me to come here, but he was always so _polite_ about it that it almost hurt to refuse." 

"Do you know why?" I had to ask, even if Zack would probably have told me to leave her alone because she was sick. I had this feeling like something was going to happen, even if that sounded cliche, and I was afraid that if I didn't ask now, we might never find out. "I mean, we figured out it was because you're a Cetra or whatever, but even Sephiroth doesn't know why Hojo wants one so badly." 

"I don't know either," Aerith said. "Tseng . . . all he's said is that it's about the Neo-Midgar Project, but I don't have any idea what that is. I don't even know if _he_ knows." 

But the President did know, or at least Hojo had to have fed him some reasonable explanation to get him to send out the troops. I might not be a genius, but I could figure that much out. 

"With a name like 'Neo-Midgar', it sounds like they're planning to build another city," Nanaki said, scratching one ear with a hind foot. 

"After all the work they put into this one?" Tifa scoffed. 

"It isn't as though this is the most pleasant place to live. The whole area around the city is desert, and not because it's arid. The land is being sucked dry of life by these mako reactors you humans insist on building. If you are truly a Cetra, you will know." Nanaki looked at Aerith, who shook her head. 

"I'm only half. My father was human, and my mother died when I was still very young. So I only have a child's understanding of what I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to do." 

"And yet you can speak to the Planet itself. _It_ knows." 

Aerith smiled, but she also shook her head. "It isn't that easy. The Planet doesn't have a single voice—it has _many_ voices, and they don't always agree with one another. Especially about important things. Sometimes they end up yelling at each other so loudly that I can't make any of it out. Although most of them do agree that the world could use more flowers." She resettled her arm, wincing. It was starting to get red streaks all up and down it again. 

Zack had traded me his Heal materia for my as-yet-useless Shield, and I cast Esuna for Aerith. It was a lot more draining than Cure or Ice, and in the end, I wasn't even sure how much good it had done. 

We needed to find some way to fix that arm, but I wasn't sure how. It wasn't as though we could take her to a doctor anywhere on the Plate. Actually, I wasn't sure it would be safe to take her to a doctor anywhere in the _world_ if Hojo was still looking for her. Maybe . . . maybe Wutai? The war hadn't been so long ago. There were probably still plenty of people there who hated Shinra. _I can't believe I'm trying to plan something like this._ And I doubted anyone would want to use a plan that _Cloud Strife_ had come up with, anyway. _Plus, how do we_ get _her to Wutai, smartass?_ You could get out of Midgar using the highway or an aircraft . . . or on foot, if you had someone who could open the gates at ground level . . . That was no good, though. A sick person wouldn't get far that way. We'd need a vehicle, and— 

Somebody ruffled my hair, and I squawked in protest, then cursed myself for sounding much too much like a chocobo. 

"Gil for your thoughts, now that you're back with us?" Tifa asked. 

"Trying to figure out how to get you out of the city," I said. "I'm sorry, I know you wanted to stay in Midgar, but under the circumstances . . ." 

"So long as I don't have to go back to Nibelheim. But it's too bad," she said, looking down at the floor. "I mean, I never even got to ask you out." 

I almost fell over. And I could feel my face heating up until it was the colour of Nanaki's fur. And Tifa was giggling. 

"Ask _me_ out?!" was the best I could come up with. 

"I'm not joking," Tifa said, and then ruined it by letting another giggle slip out. "No, really. When you came into that hospital room wearing your uniform, you looked . . . taller, somehow. More mature. I always thought you were kind of cute, but, well, that was . . . I don't know how to say it really . . . but I was going to ask Aerith and Zack to help me rope you in. I thought you might not find a double date quite as scary . . ." She was looking at the floor again, and kind of waving her feet back and forth while she balanced on her heels. "But there's no time now, is there?" 

I shook my head. "It isn't fair," I added. But life just _isn't_ fair, a lot of the time. "I think I would have liked to . . . um." I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I really had no idea what you told a girl who'd just kinda-sorta-maybe-almost told you that she liked you. Especially when I kinda-sorta-maybe-almost liked her back. "Maybe I can go to wherever you end up when I'm on leave, and you can . . . show me the sights, or something." 

"I'd like that," Tifa agreed. "So . . . you promise? It's a date?" 

She held out her hand, and I took it in an awkward grip. I mean, we were both wearing gloves, so our skin wasn't touching. I think that's the only thing that kept me from blushing. 

"It's a date," I agreed, somehow keeping my voice steady. 

After that, we stood looking for monsters and not at each other, but something in the atmosphere seemed to have loosened a bit. Aerith was smiling again. And maybe Nanaki was too, for all I knew. Right until he stiffened and stood up, looking into the stairwell with his lips drawn back from his teeth. 

"Someone is coming upstairs," he said, voice distorting into a soft growl. "I smell mako. And blood. And _Hojo_ , but all stale and all wrong." 

I tried to listen, but all I could hear was the soft hiss of static. Which . . . wasn't good. _Jenova,_ Sephiroth had said. _Hojo,_ Vincent had countered with. And mako and blood. Where was the squad that had been sent to guard the stairs? No, no time to worry about them. We had to hide. We had to hide _now_. Where . . . ? The reception desk was a big L-shaped one, and you'd have to check behind it on purpose to find anyone kneeling there. Good enough. 

I reached down and grabbed Aerith by her good arm, and she followed me across the room. Tifa seemed to get the idea and came along with us. Nanaki went stalking away in the other direction, teeth still bared, and hid behind some potted plants. We humans dropped to our knees behind the big desk, and then I pulled out my PHS. Zack was at the top of my list of contacts, so the call was as close to instant as made no difference. 

" _Cloud?_ " 

"There's someone coming up the stairs," I whispered. "Nanaki thinks it's Hojo, but there's something not-right about him. And I'm hearing static again." 

" _Crap. Hide—if it's on the stairs, there's no way you're gonna get past it._ " 

"Already on it. I'm more worried about you guys." 

" _Don't be. Seph's got it covered._ " And Zack hung up. 

Okay, I'd warned them. That was that part of my duty taken care of. All I could do now was draw my sword, prepare myself to attack at a moment's notice, and hope whatever was climbing those stairs decided to stop on a lower floor instead. 

I'd been crouched there for almost five minutes, with my teeth gritted and sweat rolling down my back and my hand holding the hilt of my sword too tightly, before I started to hear the footsteps over the static. Whoever was climbing the stairs wasn't moving all that fast. One step at a time, firm and deliberate. I was going to be shaking with adrenaline overload by the time he got up this high. 

_Just like sneaking up on a rabbit in the mountains in winter,_ I told myself. _Breathe. Slow and steady. Quietly. Wait. You can't catch a rabbit that isn't there._ Although I didn't actually have all that good a track record with the rabbits. I got maybe two a year. It had just been something to do. 

Blood. That was the smell I caught first. And then the acid-ozone smell of mako, just like Nanaki had said. I glanced in his direction, but he was still lying behind the potted plants, right below the emergency light fixture. Oh. _That_ was why he'd gone that way. The flame on his tail threw off light, and the only way to hide it was with a stronger light. Or maybe a bucket. 

I had no idea what Hojo smelled like. Really, I was glad I didn't, although I knew some SOLDIERs _could_ recognize people by smell. Sephiroth probably could, if he wanted to. And I didn't know what the scientist's footsteps normally sounded like, either. _Was_ that him? Or one of his experiments? But how would an experiment have gotten off the floor? Unless . . . it had been human, once. Vincent and the General had been clear: Hojo had no morals at all when it came to that kind of thing. 

_Ugh, this is like being trapped inside a horror movie._ Except that I would have been a lot happier with some cheap jump scares than this. 

The footsteps reached this floor, and a figure stepped through the doorway: Hojo, complete with lab coat and greasy ponytail. I'd seen him briefly when I'd gone for my first Mako treatment—I think he'd wanted to see what kind of person Sephiroth would have bent the rules for. He'd looked at me and sneered and walked away without saying a single word, and Zack hadn't told me who he was until he was out of earshot again. The only difference I could see was that he'd been wearing glasses then and he wasn't now. And his eyes . . . something wrong with his eyes. It took me a moment to figure out they were glowing with mako. Except red. A different red from Vincent's, and Zack had already told me just how abnormal that was. 

As Hojo strolled into the lobby, his shoes squelched with blood, and he left red footprints behind. He stopped at the open doorway that led to the rest of the floor, looked straight at the desk we were hiding behind, and sneered. 

"I will return later to collect you," he said. "And if you run, you will wish you had not." Then he walked through the door and out of sight. 

He'd known exactly where we were. 

_Zack, General, Vincent. Be careful, please._


	23. Chapter 23

**Vincent**

I still couldn't work the modern computer systems. I would have done something about that if we'd been able to keep to the original schedule, but as matters stood, there just hadn't been enough time. So I left the computers to Sephiroth and Zack and began looking through Hojo's store of paper documents. Most of it would be duplicated on the systems, but there might be the odd item that hadn't been transcribed. Files on discontinued projects like me. 

It was obvious that no one often entered this tiny room with all the filing cabinets. I was breathing through the collar of my cape to keep from sneezing on the dust that rose up in clouds every time I disturbed something. Like the sabatons, the garment looked ridiculous, but could be useful under certain circumstances. 

And I did find a few interesting things. A few slim files labelled in Gast Faremis' hand, containing papers not in Hojo's handwriting. A bulging file sloppily labelled "Project CHAOS"—I didn't even have to check the text on that one, since the photographs were quite obvious. And . . . 

I stuck my head out into the larger room where Sephiroth and Zack were working on the computers. "Why would Hojo have a file on your sword?" I asked the silver-haired general. 

"I have no idea. Bring it." 

I added the folder labelled "Masamune" to the stack and was just about to open another drawer when I heard Zack speak into his PHS. Hojo. On his way up. That opened the way to a number of possibilities, none of them good. 

I put the stack of folders I'd selected on top of one of the filing cabinets. Hopefully I would be able to come back for them. 

"Seph—" Zack had his hands on Sephiroth's arm. The general himself was frozen, the subtle expression on his face denoting rage. 

"Do we hide, or do we kill him?" I tried to sound much calmer than I felt as I stared into mako-green eyes. I had to admit that my gun-hand was itching to give Hojo back his bullets. But at the same time, my rational mind knew that might turn out to be a very bad idea. 

Sephiroth visibly forced himself to relax. "Hide," he said, but I could still hear the soft undercurrent of rage there. "The entire point of this was to avoid killing him. If I'd been willing to burn all my bridges, I could have done this at any time." A flicker of surprise crossed his face. I'd guess that another blind spot had just revealed itself to him. "Or at least, _you_ will hide. Zack and I have a legitimate reason for being here, so there is no need to conceal our presence. Obviously, we are in pursuit of the terrorists who released their friends from the cells." Sephiroth's smile was unpleasant, but then mine probably would have been too. "The building's ventilation system was designed with large ducts to facilitate manual cleaning by the custodial staff. I believe you should just fit." 

"So I understand." Veld had mentioned the ducts in passing. They were _supposed_ to be set up so that you couldn't use them to get anywhere interesting, but the building plans had been amended so many times during construction, and so many rooms had been repurposed over the years, that that hadn't been the case for a long time. A quick glance around the room told me where the nearest grate was, and I soon had it out of the wall and was crawling into the duct, my shoulders rubbing against the metal to either side. I would need to find a junction if I wanted to turn around. Behind me, I could hear Zack putting the grating back in place, and Sephiroth typing rapidly on one of the computers, hiding what they had been doing with it. 

The whole business took less than a minute. I could hear Zack and Sephiroth leaving the room as I worked my way further into the duct. Without the cape, I would have had to pinch my nose to avoid a sneezing fit from the accumulated dust. I couldn't afford to make that much noise. 

It didn't take me all that long to find a junction. It was even a three-way, where my duct crossed both another one passing through the same level and a vertical shaft. I grabbed the nearest of the staples that formed a ladder up the side of the vertical and used it to pull myself out of the cramped space. It was as good a place as any to wait. 

I tried my best to overlay this section of ducts on the map of the level inside my head. Given the way humans are addicted to right angles, I was pretty sure they had to parallel the sides of the building, which helped. I could hear footsteps, breathing, and heartbeats as Sephiroth and Zack moved from being near the opening I'd entered by to somewhere closer to the next duct clockwise. Towards the back of the building, where the cells were. 

For a while, nothing moved. Then someone else's footsteps and breathing and heartbeat. A slow, deliberate walk, approaching from the direction of the fire stairs. My nostrils flared at the smell of blood. 

I drew Cerberus from his holster and pushed him ahead of me into the duct leading to Sephiroth and Zack. I knew I was taking a risk, but I could tell that something was wrong. Chaos was stirring again, doing the equivalent of raising its head and pricking up its ears, and it shouldn't have been. There was nothing in this situation to justify it . . . except those strange bursts of noise that I couldn't hear. 

_Hojo. Jenova._

The miserable bastard had to have taken tissue samples from Jenova at some point. What had he done with them? Used them on SOLDIERs, obviously. Most likely in other experiments as well. Somewhere in this lab, was there a cell culture growing another brain to replace the one Cloud and I had destroyed? Or . . . ? 

No, I wasn't going to consider that possibility. Surely even Hojo wasn't that insane. 

A few more careful little pushes, the soles of my feet against the top of the duct to keep the sabatons from clanking against metal, and I was as close to the mouth of the duct as I dared get. Although my field of view was narrow, I could see the top of a familiar head. Spiky black hair bobbed irregularly as its owner shifted his feet. 

"Do you really think they came this way?" Zack's voice sounded a bit off, and the words made no sense until I realized they were scripted—something the two of them had planned beforehand. _He's a horrible actor._

"The physical evidence suggests it, but I would appreciate an unbiased second opinion. Tell me what you see." Sephiroth was less inept than Zack, although that might just be because that non-expression of his was adaptable to many different circumstances. 

"Scratches on the walls and floor. Discolouration. Someone bled here. Oh, and a bunch of . . . I dunno. Giant shell-things. Two of the doors are open, and probably shouldn't be. That grate in the floor is damaged." 

"And your conclusion?" 

"Somebody fought here. Someone opened the doors. And then . . . ran away again?" 

Applause, slow and sarcastic. Not Sephiroth's. Someone with bare hands. 

"It's clear that Hewley didn't choose you for your intelligence," a familiar voice said with a snort. "Sephiroth, I am truly disappointed that you continue to associate with this mud-man from the jungle." The insult made Zack squawk like a chocobo, but Hojo continued to talk straight over him. "Then again, I am currently very disappointed with you in general. The one thing I had never imagined I would create was a _matricide_." 

"I have never known my mother, Professor. How could I have possibly been the one to kill her?" Sephiroth sounded bored, with a light edge of sarcasm. 

" _How dare you, you ungrateful child!_ " The voice was Hojo's, and yet . . . not. Inside me, Chaos shifted, as though gathering itself for combat. 

«Calamity,» it whispered in my head. Which wasn't very useful, but did reflect my own sentiments. I began to push my way further along the duct, toward the rectangle of light through which Zack's messy hair was only just visible, and Chaos seemed to be pushing with me. 

There was metal in my line of sight now—Masamune's blade, raised to the high guard position Sephiroth seemed to favour when poised for action. It hummed a soft note, almost infrasonic. 

«The blade knows her master,» Chaos whispered again. «Who would have thought he was strong enough to wrench her away from the hand she was forged to fill?» 

" _Everything you are, you are because of us. Strength and skill and beauty and perfection—we have given you all of these things, and all you have done in return is ignore our call._ " 

"Does babbling at me hold so much fascination for you that you insist on standing here and doing it while we have hostiles in the building?" Sephiroth shot back. "Zack, please escort Professor Hojo back to his quarters so that I can finish with the rest of this floor." 

" _It appears that we will need to re-educate you._ " 

There was no more warning. Energy exploded, taking a spherical bite out of the area ahead, crumbling the wall and ceiling and shearing off the metal of the duct inches from my fingertips. I hooked my claw over the sharp metal edge and used it to draw myself forward. I shot out of the duct—I still wasn't used to my own strength—and rolled painfully over the rubble-strewn floor of a partially-destroyed cell before coming to my feet with Cerberus pointed back at the middle of the explosion. 

A creature hovered there, about a foot above the floor. At first glance, it looked like Hojo, but with his lab coat and shirt torn in the rear. From his back rose something that initially looked like wings, but the surfaces moved oddly. A closer look showed that they were made of tendrils of flesh writhing one over the other, like a tray of pink maggots. 

I let Cerberus bark, loosing all three bullets with one pull of the trigger, but a purplish tentacle struck them from the air in a movement I don't think unenhanced vision would have been able to capture. Another tentacle whipped toward me, and I jumped and kicked, letting the sabatons demonstrate their reason for existence for the first time in a long while. 

I did succeed in drawing a long streak of blood down one tentacle, but there were a dozen more—no, a hundred, but only a dozen showing any interest in me. The others were after Zack and Sephiroth. Masamune was nothing but a flicker, flinging off drops of blood as Sephiroth parried attacks. Zack was being driven up against a wall, holding his sword in front of him with its flat pointed at the Hojo-creature, using it more as a shield than a weapon. 

I dodged blows automatically, watching for an opening. I was the only one currently holding a distance weapon, and Hojo, or whatever this thing was, didn't seem likely to let up on either of the SOLDIERs long enough to let them use materia. Masamune was doing some damage, leaving streaks of blood as my sabaton had, but Sephiroth was too busy defending himself to lunge past the ridiculous number of limbs that were groping at him, and I doubted this thing was going to bleed out from minor damage. In fact, I could see wounds closing themselves as I watched. That wasn't a good sign. 

_There._ I fired again, through a gap in the twining tentacles that couldn't possibly be closed fast enough to stop the bullets. 

The Hojo-thing produced a new tentacle on the spot, and filled the gap. And Sephiroth finally missed a parry. The tentacle drew a red welt across his chest and knocked him back into a wall. His breath hissed out between his teeth as he struck. 

«Calamity,» Chaos said again, thrashing against my efforts to hold it back. «Catastrophe! Abhomination! _Jenova!_

_I fought it down and drew a Wall spell out of the materia on my wrist, placing myself between the tentacles and Sephiroth. This was going to hurt, I knew that. Hopefully it wouldn't take long for Lucrecia's son to recover himself, because if I were hit too many times, Chaos might get loose despite all my efforts to hold it down._

_I wasn't expecting a gloved hand to slide in front of me and push me back as a materia flared to life._

_"Fuck, Seph, not that thing!" Zack yelled as he threw himself sideways, into one of the half-disintegrated cells._

_Then the spell went off and everything was fire. And I do mean _everything_. This was no common fire magic, even of the highest order, and the backblast was agonizingly powerful even through a protective spell. I could feel my skin crisping and smell my clothes beginning to smoulder. Even the _concrete_ seemed to be burning, walls crumbling away until the night sky outside was visible. _

_When it went out, the loudest sound for a moment was Sephiroth's panting breaths. Then the Hojo-thing (now naked and rather badly burned, which did not improve its appearance at _all_ ) screamed and dove out of the building, spreading its writhing wings. _

_Sephiroth ran for the gap in the wall with a rare expression of naked rage on his face. Half a step behind, I grabbed at his shoulder just as he skidded to a stop and began to curse in a low voice, displaying a vocabulary and creativity I hadn't known he possessed._

_"Chaos can go after him, but you need to stand back," I said, and he visibly gritted his teeth and backed away._

_"Come back alive," he said, startling me._

_"I will," I said, even as the surprise snapped the tenuous hold I'd been keeping on Chaos. Fortunately, the monster was just as eager as I was to pursue our enemy._

_I was reduced to being an observer as Chaos dove off the building and began to wing upward in the Hojo-thing's wake. The other creature had already landed on the balcony at the top of the building and run inside again, but we could only follow so fast. There were no updrafts here, and wing-pumping wasn't all that quick a way to gain altitude. Finally we got high enough to grab the edge of the balcony's guard rail. Hojo-thing was nowhere to be seen, but it hadn't taken off again, which meant there was only one way for it to go, and Chaos ran after it, through the door (without opening it) and into the office beyond._

_There was the creature, but it wasn't alone. A gun was barking, two times, three, precisely placed shots that had no effect. The man that held it was a Turk, not one I had seen before, dark-haired and clearly of Wutainese descent. Against one wall lay the largest guard hound I had ever seen, whimpering and trying to get back to its feet, with blood leaking from it in a large pool. And just visible behind the huge desk at the back of the room was the top inch or so of a head of golden-blond hair. The colour was wrong to be anyone I had met since returning to Midgar._

_Several tentacles criss-crossed the Turk even as Chaos was propelling itself towards the fight, and the man lost his grip on his gun and went down, one hand grasping at the worst wound, low on his side, in a clear attempt to stop himself from bleeding out. Then Chaos was grabbing at tentacles and pulling on the Hojo-thing, which was far heavier than Hojo had ever been, even though I didn't see where the extra substance could have come from. Lucretia would have been beside herself, wanting to do tests. Come to think of it, so would Hojo, normally._

_It was very strange, watching my body fight (although not superficially mine at the moment) without being in control of it at all. I could feel every movement, including those that used muscles that no human possessed, but I also felt rather detached from the whole thing. Chaos snarled as tentacles tore at its wings (sharp, bright pain as the membranes ripped) and tried to tail-whip the Hojo-thing across the face._

_Hojo craned his neck impossibly and spat in Chaos' eyes, except that what hit us wasn't human saliva, but something thick and viscous, that smelled of ozone and glowed toxic-green. Mako, thickened somehow. When Chaos swiped it from its face, green droplets spattered the desk and the carpet and the edge of the Turk's suit jacket._

_In the split second we'd been blinded, Hojo had leaped onto the desk, tentacles whipping ahead to grab the person who had been lurking behind it: a young man about Zack's age, wearing a white suit with an expensive-looking silk shirt and tie. The tie was half-undone, and he looked like he was having trouble focusing—drunk, or maybe drugged, and not burning it off fast enough to be able to save himself. Right now, he was shouting wordlessly and struggling, but it wasn't doing him much good._

_The injured Turk rose to his knees, pistol back in the hand he wasn't using to try to keep himself from bleeding out, and fired a single shot, aiming steadily at the Hojo-creature's center of mass. The bullet vanished without a trace somewhere among the tentacles._

_" _Rufus!_ " the man yelled, which at least told me who the creature had in its grip: old Shinra's son. _

_There was a crash over by the stairs as the door was sliced apart and Sephiroth ran in, Masamune poised to strike. The Hojo-thing took advantage of Chaos' momentary distraction to charge at the wall, still holding Rufus Shinra. It shattered one of the huge picture windows and shot out into the air, and Chaos roared in pure frustration and released its hold on our body in an instant, leaving me to collapse to my knees on the carpet, my back still stinging where the slashes in Chaos' wing membranes had become cuts in my flesh. I could feel my enhanced healing factor pulling the wounds shut, but cast a Cure anyway to seal them._

_If Chaos had been able to cast a damned spell, we could have followed the Hojo-creature, but I had never known it to use materia, human-grade intelligence or not._

_Sephiroth whipped Hojo's blood from Masamune and sheathed the sword even as he strode across the carpet towards me, but I forced myself to my feet and went over to the dark-haired Turk. The man hadn't said anything yet, and his eyes were tracking me as I moved, but his rapid breathing suggested he was in pain even after I cast the strongest Cure spell my materia were capable of. His eyes tracked upward as Sephiroth came to a stop at my shoulder._

_"Don't try to get up, Tseng," the silver-haired SOLDIER said. "There isn't much any of us can do at this point anyway." There was a smear of soot across one of his finely-drawn cheekbones._

_"Then you've been listening too." The Turk sounded tired—no surprise._

_I'd noticed Sephiroth's earpiece earlier, but I didn't have one of my own, so I was forced to ask, "What else happened?"_

_"Hojo went on a rampage down in the civilian lodging section," came the grim reply. "The President is dead. So are Heidegger, Palmer, a number of members of the Science Department, and a couple of junior Turks. Most of the Turks who lived have suffered some level of injury. I'm not sure about Scarlet—"_

_"She wasn't in the building when the power went out," Tseng contributed from the floor. "Probably found another lover. Veld reassigned Rude to look after Reeve Tuesti, who also seems to have escaped—he was working late."_

_"So we have him left, and Scarlet," Sephiroth said. "Admiral Arcanol, over in Junon, would be the senior military officer. I have no idea who the second-in-charge of the Space Department is, but it should be in the records somewhere. As for the Science Department . . . Again, the records will be somewhere."_

_This night might just have destroyed the Shinra Corporation, and we—Sephiroth and I and Veld—had been the ones to set it in motion._

_Somehow, I didn't regret that one bit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here ends Part 1. Or something like that.


	24. Chapter 24

**Sephiroth**

It wasn't the first time I had ever been in my office before the sun came up, but it was the first time in a long time that I'd been there in a condition that spoke of having been in a recent fight. My coat was dry and cracked and curled slightly at the edges, and there were black streaks on my pauldrons. And I was tired and on edge, thwarted adrenaline still racing through my system. 

What had Hojo _done_ to himself? I was almost afraid of finding the answers, and yet I knew I needed them. Eight SOLDIERs dead, plus a number of civilians. Many more injured. And we hadn't seen it coming. 

One useful thing about the scientist's spectacular and unexpected psychotic break, if that was in fact what it had been, was that there was no one left to deny me access to the information he had hoarded. The first thing I had done upon leaving the President's office—the _late_ President's office—was unhook Hojo's personal computer so that I could bring it downstairs with me. Currently, I was engaged in hooking it back up again. 

Familiar heavy footsteps, and suddenly there was a Buster Sword leaning against my desk and a Zack Fair sitting on the corner of it. I didn't bother to give him more than a quick look out of the corner of my eye. 

"Where's my apology?" came the not-unexpected demand. "You're supposed to leave those stupid back-biter materia of yours _locked up,_ Seph! Why in hell were you even carrying that thing around?" 

"I was considering gutting the level after we had our targets out," I explained, pushing one last cable-end into place. "Merton suggested itself as a much more efficient way of doing that than a common Fire materia." 

"Except that you might have burned yourself to a crisp using it! I know how that stupid thing works, remember, Seph? You could have been killed!" 

I could feel my left eyebrow sliding out of alignment as I turned to face him. "Is _that_ what this is all about?" 

"Not targetable and damages everything within range including the caster, you told me once," Zack said, still angry. "I was on the edge of the effect, and Vince had a Wall spell up, but you weren't protected at all! Or did you think no one would care if you fried yourself?" 

"I'm a little more durable than that, Zack." If I hadn't been, I wouldn't have dared equip that particular materia in the first place. Much less socket it in combination with an MP Turbo. Although I wasn't going to mention that part to him. 

"And that means you expect me not to _worry_? Seph, sometimes you can be a real jerk, you know that?" Zack was looking rather . . . crumpled. As though he didn't know whether to be angry or sad. 

"It's called having confidence in your own judgement," Vincent said from the outer office, where he had just deposited another stack of paper files taken from the sixty-seventh floor. "And expecting your comrades to trust it as well." 

"Ugh. And you're as bad as Seph." Zack stuck out his tongue at the half-closed door, but at least he seemed less uncomfortable now. 

Vincent stepped inside. "I thought you were downstairs in Medical," he said to Zack as I switched on Hojo's computer. 

"They wouldn't let me stay," Angeal's Puppy admitted, wilting slightly. "And I don't think they're quite sure what's wrong with her. They're trying a couple of things to bring down the infection, but . . . the word 'amputate' came up." 

And a brain-damaged chocobo would have been able to figure out that wasn't good. 

"There may be some answers here," I said, walking around to the other side of my desk so that I could see the computer screen. It was a gamble, of course, since Hojo was paranoid enough to have tried to lock the files up. Hopefully he hadn't done a very good job. If he had, I would have to pass the computer on to the Turks for extended forensics, which might take weeks. The last of the Cetra would have lost her arm by then, if not her life. 

Hojo's initial password was easy enough to crack, since he'd been using the same one ever since I could remember. That got me as far as the desktop, and a set of files rigidly arranged in grids by topic, over a plain grey background. 

"Wow, and I thought _you_ were anal," Zack said, after scooting himself back on the desk for a better look. "Funny that Hojo doesn't give that impression." 

"That's because he sometimes doesn't leave the lab for weeks. And while he does wash up in the emergency showers intended for victims of chemical spills, he never remembers to bring any shampoo." Many of my memories of Hojo involved his stringy, greasy hair and rumpled shirts. I, of course, was never permitted to be so unkempt, even as a child. 

I began testing a random selection of files, starting with those I judged to be least sensitive and working my way up until I encountered the first additional passwords. Hojo always formed his security credentials in the same way, to save himself the effort of memorization: he took one of a handful of phrases and applied an algorithm to it. I didn't know all of the base phrases and algorithms, but I was familiar with enough of them to unlock some of the files. 

Many of those I banished as quickly as I had opened them. Zack had been uncomfortable enough witnessing the basic sample-taking process I went through every month. He didn't need to see the procedures for the yearly bone biopsies, the pain tolerance tests, or any of the rest of it. The last thing I needed was his pity. 

I found the preliminary observations about Nanaki and set them aside after a quick skim showed that Hojo had still been exploring the nature of that particular unusual specimen. There were also several associated files of folklore, which had not been locked. I would have to read those as well, eventually. Hojo might have been using them to shape the direction of his experiments. 

There were a lot of files on something called the Neo-Midgar Project, and a separate stack of files on Jenova. Most of those I wasn't able to access. They would have to go to the Turks. A few older ones did answer to the password derivation formulas I knew, though. _Jenova's Telepathic Abilities and the 'Reunion' Phenomenon_. _Mutagenic Capabilities of J-Cells_. I stopped on that one, and read. Then re-read, incredulously. 

"It would explain what we saw," Vincent said from behind me. 

"Hojo was never one to experiment on himself," I said slowly. "He always claimed it would compromise the objectivity of his viewpoint. If he actually applied the protocol described here to his own body . . ." . . . _then it would have been because he considered the potential rewards large enough to outweigh the negative consequences._ Still, self-infusion with alien cells, some of them modified, and standard SOLDIER doses of mako . . . _I hope he suffered._ Although it would never have taught him compassion for his other subjects. 

I opened the telepathy/Reunion document and read that, as well, although I already had some unfortunate first-hand experience regarding Jenova's telepathic abilities. The material related to Reunion was new, however, and I read it slowly. None of the other files that looked like they might be of interest would open for me, and after several minutes of unsuccessful wrangling, I copied the material relating to Nanaki and shut the computer down. 

"In the absence of Jenova's brain," I said to Vincent's reflection in the dark screen, "the call for Reunion—the summoning of all Jenova-affected organisms to 'open a path', as the file says, could presumably not have taken place. Was Hojo trying to set himself up as a substitute?" It was the only theory I could come up with, based on the data we had and my knowledge of Hojo's thought processes. And yet . . . had he really thought he could control _me_? 

Perhaps, I realized, he _had_. After all, he had been doing it all my life, in a sense. But some subtle fiber linking us had snapped in Nibelheim. Unsurprising that he hadn't been aware of it—I'd scarcely noticed myself. But until that mission, I had believed Hojo about . . . certain things. I had never seen him falsify research data before, for instance. I had thought that some tiny number of things were sacred to him. That I knew him well enough to navigate his mixture of truth and lies. But now I knew I'd been naive. 

"It would match up with something that Chaos said. It's been unusually talkative tonight." Vincent's mouth was hidden by the high collar of his cape, but the tension in his facial muscles suggested he was frowning. 

"Then why the static?" Zack asked. "If he meant to—you know—take over our minds, and stuff." 

"There might be a technique to it," Vincent said. "One that he isn't able to reproduce." 

That would indeed have been typical of Hojo. And if he had been thinking in terms of tracking and summoning Jenova-infected organisms with himself as the controller . . . I pushed my chair back from the desk. 

"We had wondered what Hojo would be injecting his recently-captured prize with, and why," I said. "I would say we just found our answer." 

"You're kidding, right, Seph?" But Zack knew I didn't make jokes of that nature. He was scrambling for reassurance, even if he could only find it in falsehood. In a way, I envied him his subconscious belief that he could change the world through acts of sheer will. I had had that trained out of me early on. 

If it was Jenova, it was likely that not much could be done for the girl, but I could at least warn Medical of that— _should_ warn them. I could tell them that she might have been exposed to a part of the SOLDIER process without any complicated explanations about Cetra and blue-grey monsters. And . . . I wanted to take a better look at the situation in person. _Self-flagellation_ , Genesis would have called it. Perhaps he was right, but I still felt a hint of irrational guilt. If I had done whatever Hojo had expected of me in Nibelheim, the girl might never have been touched. 

A light touch on my arm. _Vincent_. Red eyes caught at mine as the ex-Turk shook his head minutely. He was the only person I had ever known who could read me so well—or was it coincidence that he chose that moment to offer reassurance and negation? 

The silence in the elevator was far less comfortable than it would have been if Vincent and I were alone. Zack couldn't stay still. He was shifting from foot to foot, unable even to settle enough to do his usual squats. 

I didn't know what to say to him. Handling the injured, and the less formal parts of the notifications to dead SOLDIERs' families, had always been Angeal's job. I had no talent for it—for being reassuring and sympathetic. If I tried, most likely I would make things worse. 

The elevator stopped and released me from my dilemma before I had fumbled my way into trying to say anything. The front desk of the Medical level at night was always manned by the same elderly woman, who gave even me a sour look whenever I approached. 

"Aerith Gainsborough," I said flatly. 

The old woman glanced at Zack, then said, "Normally I would say, 'no visitors', but you'll probably get me fired if I do. Your puppy knows where she is. Just try not to wake up anyone else." 

I nodded to Zack, and he lead off, threading his way back to a small private room, most likely chosen to reduce contagion. The girl lay awake in a hospital bed, with an IV in her arm. She gave us a smile as we entered. 

"Perhaps I should have joined Shinra sooner—I never expected to be so popular," she said. There was a tag dangling from the IV stand, and I reached over to steady it so it could be read. _Amox_ , indicating a dose of amoxicillin, with date, time, and quantity. I was scarcely an expert on the medical treatment of the unenhanced, but applying a wide-spectrum antibiotic so soon suggested that no one here had any idea what to do for her. 

"How's the arm?" Zack asked. 

The girl reached over to touch it where it was hidden under the blanket. "It's fine. I think the drugs are helping, although—" 

Vincent didn't believe that any more than I did, clearly, because it was his brass-washed claw that reached out and yanked the blankets back, putting the lie to the girl's words. 

The arm lay lax upon the sheets. Red welts still ran up and down it, and the skin just below the elbow was greyish and far more translucent than it should have been, almost the colour of that— I gritted my teeth and forcibly repressed the memory of a creature floating inside a tube at the back of a mako reactor. There were also dark discolorations forming under the skin. 

"Can you move it?" Vincent asked the girl. 

"Vince, this isn't—" 

"Yes," Aerith said, cutting Zack off. "But sometimes it moves without my willing it." 

"Jenova," Vincent said in a low voice. "Hojo must not have included mako in what he gave you, or it would be spreading more quickly." 

"Jenova," the girl repeated slowly. "What is that?" 

"Something Shinra dug out of an old battlefield on the Northern Continent," Vincent supplied. "Its cells are used as part of the procedure to create SOLDIERs." 

"Most people don't react to it like you have, Miss Gainsborough," I added. "Although it's unlikely that Hojo had time to run a full set of compatibility tests on you." Another piece of very odd behaviour on his part. Normally, the man was meticulous. 

Could he have started injecting himself with his Jenova-mako-drug cocktail before he'd arranged to capture the girl, and thus not been functioning at full intellectual capacity because his body was still adapting? That made a frightening sort of sense. 

"Aerith, please, General." 

"Sephiroth," I offered—she was a civilian, after all. 

She smiled again. "I wanted to meet you, you know. Zack talks about you a lot. I just wish it hadn't been under these circumstances." She glanced at her arm. "I'm going to lose it, aren't I? The Planet . . . it's hard to hear it from here . . . but it's frightened about _this_." She gestured at the damage again. "I keep hearing words— _monster_. And _puppet_. I think it's going to have to be soon. But the doctors won't listen." 

And if a mere ineffective infusion of Jenova cells could monster her, what did that make me? 

" _No,_ " Zack said. "No, there's got to be some other way! Seph! Hojo thought he'd be able to control everyone else with Jenova in them after he shot himself up with those cells, so maybe you can—" 

"Zack, _shut up_ ," Vincent snapped. Had he seen the frozen expression on my face? "If it's possible to make the cells call for each other, you should be able to do it as well," the ex-Turk added. "But I doubt that summons is anything that would work on the cellular level. Hojo's notes were talking about controlling complete organisms that had been parasitized, not individual fragments of Jenova itself." 

Zack's expression hardened, and he stripped off his gloves and leaned over the bed to cup his bare hands above Aerith' arm. Vincent, meanwhile, shifted a bit closer to me, the back of his good hand brushing against my glove. 

_I don't think it's a binary choice. Between human and monster._ Those words offered a fragile bit of comfort to me now. That I had the body of a monster, of something as much Jenova as human . . . I was far too much of a realist to deny that in the face of my abnormal physical capacities. But that did not mean that I had to _be_ a monster. 

Zack was sweating, face contorted with effort, but nothing seemed to be happening. At last, he stopped and slammed his hands down on the mattress, head bowed. "It . . . isn't any good, is it? It isn't even working as well as the Esunas before." 

Vincent's eyes narrowed, and he raised his good hand, green light sparkling as he cast, eight Esunas flashing in rapid sequence. When he stopped, the inflammation in the girl's arm seemed much reduced, and the greyish skin was regaining colour around the edges. 

"If we can localize it to soft tissue and then cut that away, she may be able to keep the arm," the ex-Turk explained briefly. "Get a surgeon," he added to Zack, and the younger man went wide-eyed and ran for the door. Vincent loosed another string of Esunas, then popped the Heal materia out of his wristlet and handed it to me. I swapped it for the Merton that I hadn't yet had time to unequip—perhaps the MP Turbo would provide some additional boost. 

I followed Vincent's lead in casting the spells in groups of eight, and slowly, the affected area on the girl's arm shrank. Too slowly—was it out of the bone yet? We had to be certain, I knew. Absolutely certain. There would be no second chance. 

Footsteps. Zack was back, accompanied by someone in sturdy shoes—a woman, whom I recognized peripherally as one of the doctors. She leaned over Aerith and examined the girl's arm with a keen gaze. 

"It does seem to be receding," she said. "I've never heard of Esuna being used like this before, but if you can get it to contract by another half-inch, I'll try to cut it out." 

"It's the same as the method used to treat Slow-Numb in chocobos when you don't have appropriate materia," Vincent said. 

"Seriously?" Zack asked. 

The ex-Turk nodded. "Antidotes or Poisona will make the damage recede slightly, and antidotes are cheaper than materia. Then the surgery." 

"Somehow I can't imagine you working as a vet, Vince." 

"I spent part of my childhood on my grandparents' chocobo farm." 

"Huh. Really. Always had you pegged for a city boy." 

Vincent shrugged, his all-purpose reply to any question he wasn't interested in answering. 

"So, Seph . . ." 

"Stay with her," I told him. "I have a few more things left to do tonight. Vincent, you're with me." 

I was already running down the list in my head as I left the ward. Contact Junon and inform Arcanol about what was going on. Rearrange duty rosters to compensate for the dead and the injured. Make certain every Shinra base on the Planet was on the lookout for Hojo and for Rufus Shinra, separately or together. Arrange to have some doors repaired and all the computers in the Science Department decanted. And then there would be briefings and meetings and who knew what else as the situation developed. 

Unlike Zack, I wasn't going to manage to snatch any more sleep tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swiped the Merton spell from FFVI.
> 
> And the chocobo farm belonged to Vincent's maternal grandparents, not Grimoire's family. On which more later.


	25. Chapter 25

**Zack**

Half-asleep, I rolled over in the too-small bed and landed on the floor. Which woke me up right away. 

_Oh, right. I'm in Medical._ And because I'd been able to twist Seph's words around and call them a verbal order, they'd let me stay outside visiting hours, and even brought a cot. Which hadn't been made with someone of my size in mind, but it was better than the floor. 

Aerith was asleep in the bed beside me, her chest rising and falling slowly. She had bandages all up and down her arm, but the arm itself was still there, and the red streaks hadn't come back. I figured that was good. 

I also figured out that I stank. I'd barely been conscious of it last night, but my uniform and even my _hair_ smelled of burning from that awful spell of Seph's, and I had concrete dust and blood and who knew what else all over me. I needed a shower, fresh clothes, coffee, and some oil and rags to clean off the Buster Sword before Angeal's spirit went all vengeful-ghost on me. Then I'd be ready to greet Aerith properly when she woke up. 

Okay, so. Back to my apartment. Except that there was a blocked hallway in the way. Not that I think Rude really _meant_ to block it, but it was a narrow hall, and he was a big guy. He was leaning against a wall outside another private room, a couple of doors down from Aerith', looking inconspicuously conspicuous the way only a Turk on guard duty could. When I spotted the name _Veld Verdot_ tacked up beside the door, I figured out what he was doing there quickly enough. 

"So Vince _is_ one of us after all," Reno suddenly said, and since I couldn't see him, I figured he had to be inside the room. 

"He used to be," Veld agreed. A little closer and I could see them through the open door—Veld was in traction, poor bastard, probably waiting for some doctor to make sure all the bits of bone were back in place before they Cured him, and Reno was sitting at the end of the bed with his feet on the mattress, one arm in a sling, and a couple of taped-up gashes above his left eye. "I don't know where he fits in now, strictly speaking. He's latched on to Sephiroth pretty hard, for reasons I'm still not sure I understand, and he may be better off with SOLDIER anyway. If we got him back, I'm not sure what we would use him for." 

"You got any idea what's with that outfit of his?" 

Veld actually laughed. I'd never heard him do it before. Hadn't even known he knew how, really. "Most of it's just an obsolete covert ops uniform. The cape's a really early version of the thermal camouflage ponchos—when they first developed the fabric, they could only make it in red, and it didn't breathe properly, so an actual poncho would have gotten too hot. Most of us upgraded later on, but Vincent never got the chance. The sabatons he wears over his boots go with a style of hand-to-hand combat that no current Turk uses. His gun's called Cerberus, and he put three months' pay into it a couple of years before he disappeared." 

"And the claw?" 

Veld shrugged, and winced—the movement must have jarred something. "No clue. Something he picked up in Nibelheim." 

They both went quiet then, and I was past the door and turning sideways to skim past Rude when I heard, "I think we should tell him we've got his back. Once a Turk, always a Turk, yo—isn't that what you told me?" 

"Now and again someone _does_ live to retire," Veld said. "But if you and the other younger agents were willing to work with Vincent for reasons of solidarity, it would take a load off my mind." 

Oookay. I really couldn't get past what Veld had said about the cape, anyway. I kept imagining him and Tseng and Rude and even Reno dressed up as superheroes, and that was kind of distracting. In fact, I was biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. 

Half an hour later, I was showered, clean, changed, and chomping on a muffin that I'd swiped from the cafeteria when my PHS did the ominous trumpet fanfare I'd set as Seph's ringtone. Hmm. Maybe that was a little downbeat . . . ? 

"Major Fair." I pretended to be professional. 

" _Zack. I have a mission for you, although it's only bodyguard duty._ " 

Oh, man, what now? "Go ahead." With anyone else I would have said "hit me" or something, but Seph could take things like that a bit too literally. 

" _We would send one of the senior Turks instead, but most of them are injured one way or another. So. Your orders are to fetch the new head of the Space Department from Rocket Town. You'll be assigned a pilot from the regular army, and you can take one or two Third Classes with you._ " 

"Does this guy have a name, or am I just supposed to stand in the middle of Rocket Town and shout, _Hey, Space Department guy!_ " 

" _You would probably discover that you'd summoned most of the male population of the town if you did that, from what I understand. His name is Cid Highwind. I'll send you his public file—you shouldn't need more than that. You have about an hour's time to pack and get to the helicopter._ " 

"Okay. Thanks, sir." There wouldn't be much to pack—we should be back here before midnight. 

My PHS beeped, telling me I'd received a new file, and I stopped right there in the middle of the hallway to skim it. Cid Highwind. Pilot, engineer, practical physicist. Probably the one who did all the real work in the space program, while Palmer sat around and ate doughnuts. The ID photo included in the file showed him casually dressed and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He also looked like he'd forgotten to shave. And not more than average size, thankfully, so he wasn't going to be bouncing me out of the helicopter with his paunch. 

So now I just needed a Third Class, and I knew exactly which one I wanted. A quick return call to Seph and I found out that no, he didn't need Cloud for anything, so I paged my favourite not-a-chocobo and told him to meet me at the helipad. 

He had deep bags under his eyes when he showed up. Really, he should have been sleeping, but if he was tired enough he should be able to catch a few in the helicopter. 

"Did you get Tifa home okay?" I asked him, and grinned when I saw him go all red. 

"Yeah. Mrs. Gainsborough was really glad to hear that Aerith was okay. And she was cool with having Nanaki as a houseguest for a while, so that much went well." 

"And?" I prompted. 

"And what?" 

"Cloud, you're all red." 

"She, uh. Kissed me." 

"Who? Mrs Gainsborough?" I teased. 

"No, Tifa! You are _such_ a jerk, Zack!" Cloud glared at me as I began to laugh. 

"Sorry, Spiky, but you're so adorable when you're mad. Like a li'l wet pissed off chicobo." 

"Someday I'm going to put a sword between your ribs," Cloud muttered. 

"You and what army?" I lunged forward and started to tickle him. He wasn't quick enough to dodge. Not yet, at least. Maybe after a couple more doses of mako. 

Someone coughed, and I looked up from abusing Cloud to discover a middle-aged man in a trooper uniform standing nearby. "Major Fair? I'm Sergeant Gainer, sir. Your pilot." And he saluted, although it wasn't strictly required. 

I returned the salute. "Right. This is Soldier Strife, Third Class. Let's get this show on the road." I had an injured girlfriend to get back to, after all. 

Cloud did manage to fall asleep in the chopper, about thirty seconds after I shoved some ear protectors on him. They'd given us one of the birds with the nice padded seats, probably because we were going to pick up a VIP. As for me . . . well, I _had_ slept, in the early evening and then again on the cot in Aerith' room. So I looked out the window, even during the boring parts when we were over water, and tried to think . . . but I'm not Seph. All of it—Hojo and Cetra and Jenova and even some Turk stuff—was tangled together in my head, and I didn't seem to be doing a very good job of untangling it. 

I was glad when the helicopter landed in Rocket Town. It was a nice place that somehow managed to have the active bustle of Midgar but without the smog and the filth and the Plate and the tight-packed houses. Instead it had a huge rocket reaching for the sky. Which was _seriously_ cool. 

When I nudged Cloud awake, he was as impressed as I was. I mean, not that he said so, but his eyes went big and round and he stared out the helicopter windows. He also looked kinda greenish, so when the pilot signaled me it was safe, I kicked him out first. Then I got both of our swords out of the cargo webbing and got out myself, while the pilot was still doing some kind of checklist-y thing. 

"You okay, Spiky?" I asked, squeezing his shoulder. Poor kid was bent over with his hands on his thighs. 

"Better than I expected, actually. Being in the air isn't as bad as being in a truck . . . and I think the mako shot helps a little. Maybe by the time I'm fully enhanced, I'll stop getting sick this way." Cloud straightened up. His smile only looked a little bit forced. "Is that my sword? Thanks, Zack." 

I grinned—he was already thinking like a SOLDIER, with his sword being the most important object he owned. Well, okay, strictly speaking, he didn't own this one—it was an issue sword. Close enough, though. And eventually Seph would make sure he got something better. 

"Let's go," I said, and let the way over to where a guy in a Shinra-logo coverall was standing near the edge of the helipad. 

"If you need that thing fuelled, it's gonna be at least half an hour," he warned us. Not here to greet us specifically, then. 

"Talk to the pilot. He'll know what we need," I said. "Say, you know where I can find Cid Highwind?" 

"The boss-man? He'll be either at the rocket or at Mission Control. Careful, though—he's been pissed off all day. Cussin' more than usual, even. I lost a bet this morning 'cause I didn't think that was possible. But I don't expect that matters much to a pair of SOLDIERs." 

I shrugged. "What can I say? They don't give us time off work for pissed-off bosses or anything like that. Thanks for your help." 

"No problem." 

"Let's try the rocket first," I told Cloud. "Since we don't know where Mission Control is." 

Cloud smiled. "Admit it, Zack—you just want to look at the rocket." 

"And you don't?" 

"Well, of course I do. I mean, who wouldn't? Somebody's going to climb on board that thing and be the first man in _space_." 

Come to think of it, I was pretty sure that the news articles had given the name of the intended astronaut as "Highwind" . . . Oh, hell, no _wonder_ the man was pissed off. Being tapped as the new head of the Space Department might mean he was going to lose his chance at his dream. 

What were we supposed to do if he didn't want to come with us? I couldn't see hustling a top executive onto the helicopter in an arm lock, but . . . 

I shook my head. Too early to be planning for that. We hadn't even met the man yet. 

There were a lot of people around the rocket, hooking or unhooking pipes and cables, or writing notes on clipboards, or just plain staring. None of them looked like our man, though, so I picked one of the just-staring people and tapped her on the shoulder. 

"'Scuse me, you know where I can find Cid Highwind?" 

"I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until the test is over," she said without turning around. "He can't come down from the cockpit right now." 

"How long until he's done up there?" 

She looked at me and did a slight double-take. "You're here to take him to Midgar, aren't you? He's been cursing about that all morning. To answer your question, the test was scheduled to take two hours and ten minutes, and we're about halfway through. Here, let me take you to the VIP lounge. You'll be able to see what's going on there, and no one will trip over you." 

"Thanks," I said. "By the way, I'm Zack, and this is Cloud." 

"I'm Shera." She pulled her lab coat more tightly around herself as she began to walk towards a nearby building. "And I should have worn something heavier this morning. It's awfully chilly for October, isn't it?" 

"I guess so." I honestly couldn't tell whether it was cold or just cool—one of the things mako enhancement did for you was make you suffer less from temperature changes. Provided you weren't frogged. 

"It smells like it's going to rain," Cloud added. "Not right now, but maybe tonight." 

"I'm sorry, are you from around here?" 

"From Nibelheim," Cloud admitted, his mouth drawing into a thin line. "I've never been north of the mountains before, but they _are_ the same mountains, so I don't expect the rain smells that different." 

"He's been talking to the other clouds," I said, as Shera held open a door for us. 

Cloud rolled his eyes. "Like I've never heard that one before." 

"What kind of tests are they doing with the rocket?" I asked. 

"It's what's called a 'plugs-out' test of the electrical and computer systems—basically, unhook all the power and data lines going into the rocket and make sure everything still works. Which means Cid gets to turn on all the systems, one at a time or in combination, and run checklists while Mission Control makes sure that he gets the expected results and the power draw from the batteries is within the predicted limits. Not very interesting to watch, I'm afraid, and we're a couple of weeks behind schedule doing it. I don't know whether we'll still be able to launch in April or not, but we've already put the date back twice . . ." 

"I doubt anyone would notice right now if you had to put it back again," I said. "Not with everything else that's going on. I mean, it's probably going to take a couple of weeks just to sort out who's in charge of Shinra now—there're only two people left from the original Board of Directors, and the Science Department's pretty well gutted." There was no point in trying to hide any of that, since it would be all over the newspapers within a couple of days. 

"No one here seems to quite know what happened," Shera said. We seemed to have finally found our way to the VIP lounge, a carpeted room with large windows pointed towards the rocket, and a big TV screen that showed the same thing as was visible through the windows. "I mean, some people have been saying terrorists, others have been saying monsters . . ." 

"That part I'm not allowed to talk about," I said, and shrugged. "Security. You know how it is. General Sephiroth is still mad that most of them ran away, though." Well, the important one had, anyway. 

"It's difficult to imagine the Silver General being angry. When you see him on TV, he's always so . . . reserved." 

"It doesn't happen often," I admitted. "I've been his second for more than a year now, and knew him for a good three more years before that, and I've only seen him really lose his cool a couple of times. Usually, something ends up in several pieces afterwards." _Or someone._ Shinra hadn't deployed Sephiroth against ordinary humans since the end of the Wutai War, though. 

Shera shook her head. "It's always the quiet ones that turn out to have the worst tempers, isn't it? Cid is just the oppo—" She stopped in mid-sentence and leaned towards the window, flattening one hand against the glass. "What _is_ that? It isn't supposed to be there! The test—" 

Blobs of rapidly moving red and olive green were flying through the air. They swung around the rocket even as I watched. 

"I think they're velcher tasks, but . . ." Cloud said. 

"Velcher whats?" 

"Medium-sized, fat, flying reptiles. They don't have any distance attacks, but there's poison on their claws and teeth. Sometimes a few of them manage to get south of the mountains in summer, if it's warm enough." Cloud hesitated, swallowed, and said, "We need to get out there before they kill someone. I don't think they're supposed to come in big groups like this." 

"I agree, Spike—are you saying these things are local, though? That doesn't match with the pattern we've been seeing so far." 

"Maybe there's a look-alike species that lives somewhere else, I don't know," Cloud said over his shoulder—he was already on his way to the door. 

_Or maybe it isn't really a pattern,_ I thought, jogging after him. _Or maybe something's changed._ It would be for smart people like Seph to figure out exactly what, though. 

I drew the Buster Sword and charged after Cloud, through a door with a large sign saying ALARMED on it, and out into confusion. The velcher-things were making low passes at anything that moved, and civilians were running everywhere. _Not good,_ I thought. Wishing I'd asked Vince along, because his gun would have been the perfect thing for getting the creatures down out of the air. Seph could have taken them down just as easily, with some of the crazy jump-strikes I'd seen him use. I wasn't so good at those, though, so I was going to have to use materia. I fast-swapped my Ice with my Time so that I could use the connected All to wide-cast Stop, and got about half the velchers. Plus a couple of the people who'd been trying to run away. Oops. But at least I hadn't damaged the rocket. Yet. 

Cloud ran forward, Sleepeled one of the ones that was still in the air, and stuck his sword in it as it hit the ground. _Doing good, Spiky._ But I couldn't afford to watch him for long. I had to defend the people who hadn't made it to shelter yet because I'd been _stupid_. I wasn't good at materia. I _knew_ I wasn't good at materia. Angeal hadn't been either. Genesis had been the one who was especially talented with them, and Seph was a total all-rounder who was unfairly good at _everything_ , but I was better at hitting stuff with a sword. 

I picked up a rock and pitched it at one of the velchers that was still in the air. Now, _that_ I could do. "Hey, ugly! Down here!" 

I guess they were the kind of critters that flocked, 'cause three of them dove at me. The Buster Sword whistled through the air, cutting apart two and grounding the third one so that I could chop its head off. 

There had been about a dozen of them to start with, Cloud had just Sleepeled his second, I'd gotten six with the Stop spell, but where was the last one? It took me a moment to spot it, gaining altitude near the rocket, oh _hell_ , and I couldn't cast anything at it because then I _would_ end up damaging the rocket, and then I would be in big, _big_ trouble . . . 

That was when a spear came down like a thunderbolt. It went straight through the last velcher and pinned it twitching to the ground. I ran forward to slit its throat, but by the time I got close enough, it was already dead. 

"Fuck, what do they teach you morons in SOLDIER school?!" someone yelled down from above. "Get the _Stopped_ ones, for fuck's sake!" 

Well, whoever-it-was had the right idea, anyway. "You take the two over there," I told Cloud, gesturing. 

We fixed up the rest of the velchers good and quick. While we were doing that, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that there was an elevator coming down from the top of the rocket. Just an open-work thing that looked like it was part of the scaffolding. It grounded not too far from us, and a man stepped out and went over to pull the spear out of the skewered velcher. He took a close look at it, then propped the weapon against his shoulder, took out a pack of cigarettes, and lit up. 

"I suppose _you're_ here to take me back to Midgar," he said looking at me. "Sooner we get there, sooner I can get _back_ , so let's get this fucking show on the fucking road." 

Cid Highwind sure did know how to make an entrance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't figure out how to shoehorn any tea into Cid's first appearance, alas.


	26. Chapter 26

**Vincent**

I had been shadowing Sephiroth silently for hours, quasi-invisible in my Third Class uniform, and I had yet to see him take even a few seconds to rest. While I couldn't deny the urgency of the current situation, there was a limit to how much assistance a SOLDIER general could be in sorting out Shinra's bureaucratic problems, and indeed, a lot of what Sephiroth was currently taking on himself seemed to be no more than make-work. 

It was only when he started pacing inside his office like a caged Kalm fang that I started to truly worry, though. Four steps forward, whip around, four steps back. I let him have about a dozen iterations before I caught his elbow with my good hand. 

He stilled immediately, although I wasn't sure what to make of the expression on his face. Nothing either of us could do would make the Turks decrypt those files faster, or allow us to find Hojo faster, or . . . anything worthwhile, really. And I did understand why he didn't want to stay still and have nothing to do but think. 

"It occurs to me that we've never sparred," I said, and saw something flash, deep inside those green eyes. It perhaps wasn't the best possible method of giving him something to do for a while, but it was the best I could come up with at that moment. 

«You might try embracing him and—» 

_Shut up, Chaos!_

"Are you certain you're up to it?" 

"You aren't at your best either," I pointed out, and a silver brow rose elegantly. "And I don't find waiting any more entertaining than you do." 

"Very well. It should be interesting, at least. Long-distance weapons aren't popular in SOLDIER, so I can't say that I've ever fought anyone with your specific combination of abilities. Even without taking your Limit Break into consideration." Sephiroth took Masamune from its stand and gestured for me to lead the way. 

"I hadn't intended to go that far. It takes quite a bit of damage for me to build up to it." 

"Neither had I, to be honest, but I'm curious about your other . . . inmates. You said there were four of them in total?" Sephiroth said as we pushed through the door to the stairwell that I'd been seeing far too much of over the past few days. 

I nodded. "The Galian Beast resembles a Behemoth, but it's human-scale and more gracile. Durable, but not intelligent. The other two . . . I don't know. Humanoid, but not human. Hojo called them Death Gigas and Hellmasker. I don't let them out very much." Hellmasker was especially dangerous. While not as intelligent as Chaos, it was much closer to human than the other two, with some understanding of language. 

"Hmm." We descended half a flight of stairs in silence. "It occurs to me that if you want to regularize your administrative status and kill off 'Vincent Gunner', this is probably the best time to do it. With Hojo no longer a factor, there should be very little risk." 

"Let me think about it." Really, I didn't think having my history connected up properly inside Shinra mattered all that much, and I was indifferent to what people thought my surname was. But it would make things a little less complicated. 

"It wouldn't have to mean going back to the Turks," Sephiroth said as we emerged from the stairwell again. 

_Is that your way of saying you don't want me to leave?_ I wondered. _Or am I reading too much into this?_

"It isn't as though they'd have any use for me. My . . . Limit Break . . . makes me an unacceptable risk for bodyguard duty, it's impossible for me to go undercover, and my specialty isn't one the company needs right now." I stopped outside a room whose sign read _Training Room_. It didn't seem to be occupied. It would do, then. 

I'd read about the holographic training rooms while poking through the miscellaneous assortment of rulebooks, manuals, and promotional publications scattered around the lounge at the other end of this floor. This had to be the newest one, the one that didn't require helmets. I had no idea of how to operate it, but Sephiroth clearly did, because he went straight for the wall panel next to the door and manipulated it for a bit. 

"I've set it to vary the terrain at random every few minutes," he said, shrugging out of his sword harness and leaving it beside the door as he drew Masamune. "If you're ready . . ." 

I nodded. Sephiroth touched the console one last time, and the room around us flickered and became something else entirely. 

Jungle. Not optimal terrain for either of us, but good enough for me when the first thing I needed was to put some distance between us. It wasn't quite as easy as I'd thought it would be. Whoever had created the simulation had included fauna as well as flora, with appropriate simulated breathing and heartbeats. That didn't make Sephiroth undetectable, since he was still the largest thing in here and moving quite quickly, but it meant that I could lose track of him for a second or two when the noise level rose. 

The amount of space inside the room was limited, of course, but I wanted at least twenty feet if I could get it. That would give me the time to squeeze off a shot before I was forced to dodge sharpened steel. 

Ice suddenly speared out at me from behind a screen of vegetation, and I jumped for the safety of a branch and fired a round in that direction before I took off through the trees. I found myself smiling slightly—this _was_ fun. A love of the chase was one of the things that had inspired me to join the Turks in the first place. 

«Still think you don't deserve it, my dear host?» 

Chaos' unwillingness to settle down and go back to sleep was annoying, though. And required me to divide my attention slightly. 

There were two more brief, inconclusive exchanges of spells and bullets before the terrain changed to desert. I was at the top of a dune—not an advantageous position—and there was no cover anywhere except among the folds of the land itself. And Sephiroth was charging toward me at full speed. 

It became a rapid, running battle, with me shooting and Sephiroth dodging or deflecting the bullets with Masamune and throwing spells back at me in an attempt to slow me. And there were limits to the tricks I could use under these conditions, with the equipment I had. I once managed to snatch a few seconds additional breathing space by casting a quake spell between us when he wasn't expecting it, but he reacted quickly and leaped over the damage, resuming his pursuit. 

Then the terrain changed again, to the interior of some sort of industrial building. _Much_ better. I leaped clear of a railing as Masamune came down, landing on another catwalk higher up. Another jump took me to the hook of some sort of lifting tackle, dangling from the ceiling, and the longest one I'd tried yet took me to a control post at the top of a long staircase. Sephiroth was struggling to follow—apparently he couldn't jump quite as high. 

I got up on top of the control post's console, then jumped again, aiming for the counterweight that balanced the big hook I'd been standing on before. It was the wrong shape for me to stand on, but there was no footing for Sephiroth within Masamune-length, either. I locked both my legs around the roughly oval-shaped weight and let Cerberus bark, and was pleased to see one of the bullets glance off Sephiroth's armour, rather than his sword. 

Sephiroth took advantage of the moment it took me to reload by casting a Bolt spell, forcing me to drop away from the metal counterweight, since I would have no chance at all if the lightning caused me to release it spasmodically. I was reaching for the rail of another catwalk when our surroundings changed again, and I landed in shallow water flowing over rock. Rolling back to my feet, I discovered I was now on the side of a rocky hill, with a stream cascading gently down from a spring near the top. The water was cold to the touch . . . and left no wetness behind. Meaning that my awkward landing hadn't made it impossible to fire Cerberus. 

Sephiroth was several terraces further down. Well, then. Not all the water was as shallow as what I'd first landed in. I began to circle, keeping the deepest pool between us. _Don't hurry,_ I told myself. _Aim and fire. Be careful of what you hit._ The Turk files had contained some specifics on Sephiroth's regenerative abilities, and they were excellent but not omnipotent. Probably. It would be best to avoid head or chest shots, although abdominal was safe enough. 

Lucrecia's son climbed the hillside quickly, ignoring the water until we were on roughly the same level, with a deep pool between us that was just a little too wide for Masamune to reach across. I tracked him with Cerberus, waiting for exactly the proper moment as he flashed into motion— 

—and ran _across the surface of the water._ Toward me. Probably a flaw in the Training Room's illusion. My suddenly hurried shot went wild, and I knew there would be no time for a second. I jammed Cerberus back into his holster, leaned back sharply as Masamune cut across the space my shoulders had been occupying, and then threw myself forward underneath the blade, towards Sephiroth's left side. His sword's extreme length wouldn't be— _couldn't_ be—anything other than a disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat. 

He dodged fluidly to the side as I aimed a punch at his stomach, allowing my fist to just skim along his hip—maybe even hoping I would get my hand tangled in his coat, but I wasn't that kind of amateur. I feinted with my claw, heard metal squeal against metal as Sephiroth caught it against the base of Masamune's blade, and kicked at his leg, wishing that I was still wearing my sabatons. The steel toe of the SOLDIER boot would do some damage, but the sharp point would have done more. 

Sephiroth's unexpected reaction was to step in towards me and drive Masamune's hilt downwards into my stomach. It was far from the perfect angle for a blow of that kind, but it still staggered me enough that he had a split second to disengage and bring the edge of the blade against my neck. 

"You win," I said, still trying to figure out when, in that confusion, I had ended up on my knees. Sephiroth was smiling, eyes lit with pleasure, as he withdrew the sword and instead gripped my claw to help me to my feet. I was a bit surprised when he casually put his hand on the ugly thing without any sign of being disturbed by it. 

We were both a lot more surprised when he pulled it right off. A silver eyebrow rose as Sephiroth turned the metal shell over in his hands. 

"It appears that Masamune cut through the retaining cuff," he said, touching the spot where his sword had sliced through it, just above the elbow. "I'm not sure it can be repaired. The design is . . . bizarre." 

"Hojo isn't much of a mechanical engineer," I said. "Leave it." 

Lucrecia's son nodded and dropped the thing, and I forced my gaze down from his face. Even if I didn't entirely _want_ to see what Hojo had left of my hand, I knew I needed to. 

It . . . wasn't as bad as I had expected. Or at least, not at first sight. The two outermost fingers, and half of the palm, were still mine, and the rest was at least correctly proportioned and looked nearly human, although with greyish skin and dark, thickened nails. I flexed it, and it responded almost naturally, with a slight lag in the middle finger. I didn't care much about that. So long as my trigger finger worked, I could manage. 

"I'm going to have to find a left-hand glove," I said, heaving myself to my feet. "How do we turn this thing off, by the way?" 

Sephiroth pulled out his PHS and did something with the screen, and the hillside vanished, becoming a room with metal walls. The hill itself had been a series of blocky protrusions from one of those walls, which were now sliding back into place, becoming no more than a series of rectangular markings. I'd wondered why the surfaces under our feet seemed so real. At a guess, the "drop" below the lowest catwalk in the industrial building interior hadn't been more than six inches in reality. The real walls, floor, and even ceiling were heavily scarred, with char marks, sword scratches, and now bullet holes. 

"There's a layer of non-conductive padding underneath the finish that can absorb most blows and projectiles, and then a barrier layer of mako-annealed steel," Sephiroth said, evidently noting what I was looking at. "It's still somewhat delicate—there are spells I wouldn't use in here, and Masamune can cut through the walls if I put enough power into a blow—but better than the rest of the building." 

I nodded, and Sephiroth's PHS trilled for attention. Several times. He glanced at it and scowled, then held it up so that I could read the sequence of one-line anonymous messages on the screen. 

_General, what the hell is Gunner doing as a Third? He should be a Second, at least._

_That's no Third, he's a First or a Turk or something._

_Please up-Class him, sir. This is making the rest of us look bad._

"I suppose I'm just going to have to come clean," I said, keeping my voice bland. Did Sephiroth relax just a hair, or was I reading too much into his minuscule changes in expression and body language? 

"It would simplify matters." Sephiroth made as though to return the PHS to his pocket, but it trilled again before he could do so. This time, I manoeuvred to read over his shoulder. I also tried to remember the last time I'd seen anyone _talk_ to someone over a PHS. The primitive ones we'd had available twenty years ago had only been capable of that, and I still wasn't accustomed to the additional functions that the current generation of devices made available. 

_Admiral Arcanol and the new Science and Space Department heads are here. Meet in the executive boardroom on 66._ Sender: Reeve Tuesti. 

The Shinra Corporation was pulling itself back together.


	27. Chapter 27

**Sephiroth**

I was grateful for Vincent's silent presence in the elevator on the way to the executive floor, and for the sense of him there behind me as I made my way to the boardroom. It reminded me of having Angeal at my back, except without the sometimes-abrasive commentary about dreams, honour, and general ethics. Vincent's support was . . . less conditional. 

We were the last to arrive. Everyone else was already there, where "everyone else" consisted of Reeve, Scarlet, Veld, Arcanol, a man I vaguely recognized as the would-be astronaut Cid Highwind, and a woman in a lab coat. The question was why _I_ had been called here at all. I wasn't in line to inherit Heidegger's position on the board—that would be either Arcanol or Veld, depending on who wanted what and how badly. And SOLDIER hadn't been counted as a separate department since Lazard had defected. So the logical conclusion was that they wanted some form of report on what had happened last night. 

Veld, I noted, was in terrible shape, with no tie on, his shirt open to show several bandages, and a plastic ID bracelet from Medical visible on his wrist. The doctors had likely only permitted him to come to this meeting because it was in the same building, and if he didn't return himself to their tender care immediately afterwards, they would probably come to find him. 

Arcanol looked older than I remembered, or at least balder. His beard was still neatly trimmed, but it had gone from salt-and-pepper to almost white. He still wore just as many medals as Heidegger had, but his had been earned in the naval battles of the Wutai War instead of invented to make himself look better. Old Shinra had never thought the navy was all that important, so Arcanol had been relegated to a secondary role in the military up until now. 

The woman in the lab coat . . . If she was the new head of the Science Division, then she was almost impossibly young for the post, and given that I had never seen her on the lab floors, she must have worked primarily at some other branch of Shinra. Junon, at a guess—she was seated beside Arcanol, and they looked relaxed and familiar with one another, to my eye. Other than that, she seemed ordinary, for a creature of that loathsome breed known as _biologist_. Medium brown hair, grey eyes, glasses, features regular enough to be considered "pretty". And, unless I missed my guess, no taller than Cloud Strife. 

"Rayleigh Pruitt, General," she said, doubtless noticing my eyes on her. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you—I don't think we ever crossed paths when I was still here in Midgar." 

I nodded to her, the minimal concession required by politeness. Then I turned my attention to Arcanol, who was looking past rather than at me, to where Vincent stood at my shoulder. 

"Thought this was supposed to be a closed meeting," the old sailor said. 

"Vincent has a history with Hojo," I said evenly. "And I would expect the good doctor to be a significant item on the agenda for today." 

"He's never even had a background check done." Reeve seemed more curious than condemning, though. 

"I was in Administrative Research," Vincent said, speaking for the first time. "If I wanted to cause trouble for Shinra, I already know where to find a graveyard's worth of skeletons." 

Cid Highwind barked a laugh. "Sounds like he's got you there. Fuck, he even _looks_ like a Turk: stone face, and that hand cannon." 

" _I_ don't care if he stays," Scarlet said, smiling lazily as she eyed Vincent. Arcanol snorted, since he knew her appetites as well as anyone. Reeve shrugged. Veld sat watchfully. And Rayleigh Pruitt . . . was staring at Vincent with an odd sort of intensity. _Not_ the same kind as Hojo so often displayed, thankfully, but I couldn't interpret it, and that worried me. 

"Sit down, please, General," Reeve said. 

There was only one empty chair, between Arcanol and Veld. I propped Masamune against the table between myself and the head Turk before taking it, and Vincent positioned himself at my shoulder. I could see his reflection in the polished tabletop if I looked down, but he was as silent and motionless as any statue. 

"Right," Reeve said. "The first business of this assembly is to select a President Pro Tem for the Shinra Corporation. Regulus Shinra held fifty-one percent of the company's shares, and his will indicates that he intended Vice President Rufus to succeed him both as President and as shareholder, but with Rufus unavailable, some arrangements have to be made." 

They _were_ treating me as a member of the Board. That was . . . beyond odd. 

"Has to be you, Tuesti," Arcanol said. "No question. You're steady, you're good at administration, you'll keep things from falling apart, and you and Scarlet are the only two left from the original Board. Well, Veld, I suppose, but no one would put up with a Turk in charge for very long. Picking anyone else would be stupid." 

Scarlet has stiffened slightly, but she was nodding as she frowned. Even she knew that "steady" and "good at administration" didn't describe her. 

"Sounds right to me," Cid Highwind said. "Unless anyone else has a better idea." 

"I don't think we need to bother with a show of hands or whatever if we only have one nomination," Arcanol finished. "Congratulations, Mr. President." 

"Thank . . . you." Reeve looked like someone had hit him over the head. For an intelligent man, he had a surprising set of blind spots. "Um. Very well. Next item on the agenda—what exactly _happened_ last night? General? Mr. Verdot?" 

Where to begin? How much did I want to tell these people, when some of them were complete unknowns, and Scarlet, at least, was venemous? "Initially, we had some terrorists trying to get into the building. They cut off the power supply. While that was going on, Hojo used himself as a guinea pig in one of his own experiments, lost his mind, and went on a rampage through the Tower. It wasn't a security failure mode we had anticipated, so he ended up making quite a mess." 

"Okay, so that's what _looked_ like it happened," Arcanol said, leaning back in his chair. "Where does it start to tack off-course?" 

"Only in that I've never known Hojo to do anything wholly random, and there are auxilliary events that I doubt were reported outside the Science Department." 

"Like?" Scarlet said, sounding bored. 

"The kidnapping of a young woman from the slums. Normally, given Hojo's penchant for human experimentation, I wouldn't consider that unusual, but in the past, he's been too cautious to take anyone with connections inside Shinra. Kidnapping Major Fair's girlfriend strikes me as extremely sloppy unless he thought he had something to gain by taking her specifically, and turning out the regular army to do it, rather than the Turks, is beyond odd." We hadn't tried to hide Aerith' presence in the Tower after we had rescued her, so it wouldn't have been difficult for these people to find out about her, but I was reluctant to drag in the Cetra matter, or even Gast Faremis. At least for the time being. "There was also a mention of something called the 'Neo-Midgar Project', which apparently I was not on the need-to-know list for." Cloud had reported that, through a yawn, before I'd sent him off to bed. 

Reeve blinked several times. "Neo-Midgar? I think it's more that it's been on hold since the war." 

"The President's pie-in-the-sky dream about moving the company to a land of endless mako that the Ancients supposedly had access to," Scarlet added, with a snort. "I never did figure out why Hojo supported it. He was a slimy little creep, but he wasn't a _stupid_ slimy little creep. Most of the time." 

Interesting. An honest project, or a politically expedient lie Hojo had come up with to gain the support of the old President? I shook my head. "We still only have a partial picture of what was going on inside the Science Department. None of the researchers here in Midgar survived. Hojo was . . . beyond thorough." Another set of details these people didn't need to know, about Hojo and his tentacles chewing his unfortunate former subordinates to bits. "The Turks are working on decoding his files, but I'm told it may take some time. Which brings us to you, Doctor—I assume it is "Doctor"—Rayleigh. What do _you_ know about Hojo's projects?" 

"Not very much," Rayleigh said promptly. "I only joined Shinra two years ago. Doctor Hojo assigned me to a peripheral project relating to SOLDIER. Then, about six months ago, I . . . messed up, and was re-assigned to study the effects of the Junon reactor on local marine life. I know the code-names of a few projects, but not much about what they pertain to." 

"The Jenova Project," I said, watching her closely as I did so. It was an effort to hold her eyes, even though she looked nothing like Hojo. 

Rayleigh shook her head. "Only the name, and the fact that 'Jenova', whatever it is, is the source of the J-Cells used in the SOLDIER enhancement process." 

I glanced up at Vincent, who obligingly said, "In 1977, Shinra geologists prospecting for mako on the northern continent found a humanoid biological specimen preserved in a crystallized materia layer. Gast Faremis, who was the head of the Shinra science department at the time, named it 'Jenova' and incorrectly identified it as an Ancient." 

"Okay, so if it isn't one of these Ancient things, what the fuck is it?" I was starting to wonder if Cid Highwind was capable of generating a sentence that didn't contain at least one four-letter word. He was also chewing on, and fiddling with, a pen in a way that suggested he really wanted a cigarette. 

"Who knows?" Vincent said, with a shrug. "Gast was the expert, and we haven't found his notes yet. They may have been destroyed. His theory, whatever it was, was unpopular enough at the time to have him removed from the Jenova Project. I had no further contact with him after that." 

"We might need an historian to shed some light on this," Reeve said. "Or maybe an archaeologist or even a folklorist." 

"Does it really matter what exactly Hojo was playing with?" Scarlet asked. 

"Since we still have to deal with him, yes it does." Arcanol spoke firmly. 

"Our worst worry at the moment is that there might be some factor in the enhancement process that would allow Hojo to control members of SOLDIER against their will, or simply cause weaker-willed individuals to go on a rampage." I didn't like saying it. The thought of Hojo wrenching from me one of the few things I'd never allowed him to touch—my free will—was revolting. Remembering Jenova's mental pressure made me feel ill. And yet all Hojo seemed to have learned to produce so far was mental static. 

Theoretically, _I_ should be able to employ these mental tricks myself. To block Hojo's telepathy, or even issue counter-commands. And that thought was equally revolting, an ability I had never wanted. There had been times in my life when the contents of my mind were all that I had owned. Taking that away from someone was . . . wrong. Unethical. _Unacceptable._ An act of the monster I had promised myself I would not become. 

_I don't think it's a binary choice._ Odd, how comforting I found those words. Maybe it was just because they'd been delivered by one of the few people I'd ever met who could possibly understand. 

"I don't know enough at the moment to be able to confirm whether that's possible," Rayleigh said. "But the information is just as likely to be in the Science Department's general files about SOLDIER as in Hojo's private files, and I can't believe everything in the department is encrypted. I'll start looking as soon as we're done here." 

"There is one other thing," I added. "I want all recruiting for SOLDIER put on hold until we've discovered exactly what Hojo was hiding. That means postponing the normal series of tests and admissions for this year." 

It was a bit of a risk. Regulus, the old President, had been talking about an _increased_ recruitment drive to get our numbers back up. But Reeve would hopefully realize that, aside from the risk, the last thing we needed right now was the destabilization that would develop as we tried to integrate large numbers of new troops. 

"Seems like sense to me," Arcanol said. "Do we need to vote on it, or something? I'm not quite sure how this 'Board' thing is supposed to work." 

Cid barked a laugh. "Makes you fit right in. I don't have a clue either." 

"I don't see why we would need more SOLDIERs right now," Veld said. "We aren't fighting any wars, and we have enough to keep the monsters under control. You have your moratorium, as far as I'm concerned." 

"Does anyone _dis_ agree with the idea of holding off?" Reeve asked, but it appeared neither Rayleigh nor Scarlet had any interest. "So . . . other than searching for Hojo and for Rufus Shinra, and trying to figure out what in hell Hojo thought he was doing, does anyone have any _useful_ suggestions for the near future? Or any problems that need to be aired immediately?" 

I considered and rejected the idea of bringing up the out-of-place monsters. That was just a minor problem and not an epidemic . . . yet. 

"Right," Reeve said. "I think . . . we need to set up some sort of secure remote-conferencing system with Junon and Rocket Town, so that the admiral and Mr. Highwind don't have to travel to Midgar all the time. It will also provide some flexibility for General Sephiroth when he's in the field." 

"One thing I've been wondering is why Sephiroth is here at all," Veld said. "And myself, for that matter. Previously, I wasn't even considered an associate member, and Lazard was barely tolerated." 

Reeve sighed. "Because right now, we need both the General's raw brainpower, and your accumulated institutional knowledge. We can reorganize again when we've found out what's happened to Rufus." Unspoken was the wish that Rufus would be there to do his own rearrangement of representatives. "Since there's nothing further, I think we can break it up for today. We'll resume in one week, unless there's some major development before then." 

This . . . was going to be difficult, I reflected as I rose to my feet. I was playing so many cards so close to my chest that I was rapidly accumulating an entire deck, but all of those cards represented questions, not answers. Hojo had taken all of those with him. Anger tightened my hand on Masamune as I returned her to her place at my back. I snorted softly. It seemed that no one in this world could enrage me more, or make me more miserable, than my weedy, greasy little . . . sperm donor. 

"Um . . . excuse me? Vincent? Your full name is Vincent Valentine, isn't it?" Doctor Rayleigh sounded like she wasn't entirely sure what answer she wanted. 

"Yes. Why?" Vincent had no expression as he spoke, but I knew he was probably just as curious about this as I was, or he wouldn't have bothered asking even an all-purpose single-word question. 

"I think . . ." The woman shook her head, and then blurted out, "I think you may be my uncle." 

A long pause. 

"You're Anna's daughter, then," Vincent said at last. "I'm surprised she remembers I ever existed. And it would be better for everyone if you just forgot about me again. I'm dangerous to be around." 

"You're family," Rayleigh said, but she sounded uncertain. 

"Blood isn't everything. You don't need me." 

"Can I at least tell Mom you're alive?" 

"Stopping you would be more trouble than it's worth." Vincent turned on his heel and strode for the door. I gave Doctor Rayleigh a long look before following, but her expression was impenetrable. Her heartbeat and the scent cues I was picking up suggested agitation, but that didn't mean I could identify the exact reason behind it. 

Vincent was waiting for me inside the stairwell. "Anna was my half-sister by my mother's second marriage," he explained, unasked. "I haven't seen her since she was five." 

"And you have no desire to renew contact." I still didn't understand how family was supposed to work for normal humans. The theory always seemed completely divorced from the practice. 

Vincent shrugged. "She doesn't have any place in the life that I've chosen. Explaining to her why I'm here and doing what I'm doing would be as pointless as explaining marksmanship to a chocobo. And I don't like wasting my energy that way." 

"You consider her unimportant." 

A nod. 

"And Doctor Rayleigh?" 

"Has nothing to do with me. Unless we find some way we can use her." 

Even I was knowledgeable enough about human relations to realize most people would have considered that cold . . . but I was fairly certain that it was the Turk in Vincent that was speaking now. And the Turks were trained to be cold. The anomalous thing here was Vincent's attachment to me, not his lack of interest in Doctor Rayleigh and her mother. 

"And what would it take to make you use me?" I said it very, very softly. Allowing Vincent the choice between responding, and pretending that he hadn't heard. 

"If we ever ended up in a place where I thought that was the only viable option . . . I'd shoot you first. Or myself, if I thought it would work. You've already been used enough. In any case, it was you who dragged me back out into the light of day. I don't have any agenda right now that's separate from yours, so I have nothing to use you for." 

"Even returning those bullets you owe Hojo?" 

Vincent shrugged. "As long as he's alive, I'll always have the option of shooting him later. And I don't particularly care whether or not I'm the one who kills him, so long as he ends up dead. I admit that I'd like him to suffer, but it isn't that important." 

It seemed to be the truth, or at least I couldn't detect any signs of contradictory emotions, although Vincent was much more difficult to read than the average. Turk training, combined with the lack of an audible heartbeat, made it hard to tell whether he was under stress. 

"Remarkably, Hojo may have done us a favour for once," I said. "It was the old president who was so fond of having cameras everywhere and anywhere. Now that he's gone, perhaps I can have some of them removed. Then we can stop hiding in the stairwell whenever we want to have a conversation." 

Vincent snorted. "The Turks won't be in favour, but if you like, I'll try to work on Veld a bit." 

"Do that." 

It was extremely odd, I reflected, that whenever Vincent said something about shooting me, it managed to come across as reassuring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's remarkable how difficult it is to come up with a named scientist in the FFVII universe who isn't either crazy or dead (or crazy and dead). Rayleigh was the best I could do.
> 
> And yeah, Seph is going to end up regretting that moratorium on new SOLDIERs a bit.


	28. Chapter 28

**Cloud**

"Excuse me, coming through here!" One of the problems with being short was that even with my uniform on, people tended not to notice me unless I got in their faces a bit. Five-fifteen right in front of the Sector Zero train station was a crowded time and place, and I couldn't shove too hard, because even though my enhancements weren't all that big a deal yet, I was still strong enough to hurt someone. Zack had reminded me of that several times. 

I fought my way across the tide of people on their way into the station, over to the exit doors. That area was a lot less crowded. There were plenty of people who worked on the Plate and lived in the slums, but going the other way was just about unheard-of. Supervisors at the power plants and maybe some charity workers might do it, but there weren't enough people in either category to cause a human traffic jam. 

It wasn't difficult to spot the people I was looking for, since they were the only ones in the little waiting room by the ID check barrier that was intended to keep unwanted slum rats from coming topside. 

"Cloud!" Tifa spotted me first, rising from her seat to wave. Beside her, Nanaki stretched and got himself into an upright sitting position, with his tail wrapped around his haunches. 

Mrs. Gainsborough didn't move. She looked tired and nervous. 

"Are you their escort?" the trooper manning the exit point asked. He gave me a sour look—never mind that this was probably going to be the highlight of his day. I'd pulled station duty myself a few times, and it was usually boring as hell. Unless you were on the evening shift and got drunken assholes trying to sneak past you. Then it got too exciting. 

"That's right. Here are the papers." There was a whole folder—temporary IDs for two humans, a special permit for Nanaki, authorization to enter the Shinra building, and a note signed by Zack and countersigned by Sephiroth. The trooper went through it all as slowly as possible, and then some. He was probably one of the ones who hated SOLDIERs. 

"So you're Third Class Soldier Cloud Strife? Can I see some ID?" 

I showed him my card, but didn't let it out of my hand even when he reached for it and pulled. The regs said I wasn't required to give it up to anyone except a superior officer, military police, or one of the Turks, and this joker wasn't any of those. He wasn't strong enough to take it away by main force either, even if he was a head taller and a good fifty pounds heavier than me. Even a little mako went a long way. I just let him have a good look, with his neck craned at an awkward angle, then put the thing back in my pocket. 

"Are we done?" I asked. This guy reminded me much too much of the ones who used to beat on me in Basic, just because I was the smallest. 

"Yeah, sure, princess. Go collect the girlfriend and the mother-in-law, and don't get caught slipping stuff into the General's drinks if you ever try this again." Even the bastard's smile was nasty. I clenched my jaw and told myself I had nothing to prove to a small-time jerkass trooper. I was beyond that now. And I'd be written up if I started anything with an unenhanced. Breaking this guy's jaw was _not_ worth dealing with a month of punishment detail plus an angry General Sephiroth. And there would be an angry Sephiroth, since I was his protege now, and anything I did reflected on him. 

So instead of punching Trooper Asshat, I went over to Tifa in the waiting room instead. And froze up for a couple of seconds when she, awkwardly, hugged me. Then I got it, and hugged her back. And blushed a bit, because I was still getting used to the idea that she _liked_ me. And blushed again when she let me go and I realized that I'd been ignoring our other, more important guest. 

"Mrs. Gainsborough," I said. "I'm sorry for the interruption. I'll take you to Aerith now." 

The older woman smiled. "It's fine, Cloud. In fact, I'm glad to see you and Tifa getting along so well. As long as Aerith is all right, it doesn't matter if we're a few minutes late." 

"As far as I know, there's no change from this morning, ma'am. Once they're sure that there's no infection down near the bone, they'll Cure her and send her on her way—probably tomorrow." It still blew my mind that Vincent's experience looking after _chocobos_ had saved Aerith' life, or at least her arm. The ex-Turk just didn't seem like a chocobo kind of person. Or much of an anything-else kind of person, either, really. Not that I had any right to talk. Except for Zack, everyone who had made it back from the Nibelheim mission was kind of . . . hobby-deficient. _Maybe I should ask Aerith to teach me about gardening._

No one bothered us after we got to the Shinra building. Even though we had Nanaki following along like an oversized pet with no leash. I just wished I hadn't been pretty sure that it was because almost everyone in the building recognized me, these days. When Zack had showed me the bulletin being circulated by the Silver Elite, I'd treated it like a joke, until I realized that everyone really _was_ calling me "the General's pet chocobo" behind my back. And by then, it had been too late to stop it. 

Good thing that most of my life in Shinra had been a practical lesson about gritting my teeth and enduring. It wasn't even the worst nickname I'd picked up. But it had taken a lot of _nothing to prove_ to get me through today so far. 

Medical was busier than usual. A lot of people had been hurt last night, between Hojo and the terrorists. I . . . didn't like that. Wasn't happy knowing that Sephiroth had had a hand in setting all of it up. _Yes,_ there shouldn't have been many people wandering around at one o'clock in the morning. _Yes,_ everyone who actually _lived_ in Shinra Tower was employed by the company—if you had an outsider spouse, or even a kid, they couldn't stay here with you—and pretty high up, at that. High enough to know there was some shady stuff going on. No innocents should have been at risk. But I couldn't get rid of the feeling that the attack would have been cruel even without crazy tentacle Hojo as a factor. 

Had anyone actually been killed by the anti-Shinra groups who had invaded the lower levels? I didn't know, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. 

I led Mrs. Gainsborough, Tifa, and Nanaki into the maze of private rooms at the back. Past a junior Turk who was pretending not to see us as she stood guard outside Veld's room, and then on to Aerith'. 

I was a little surprised to discover Aerith wasn't alone. The black-haired Turk—Tseng?—was standing beside her bed, looking awkward. 

"We'll ensure that there isn't any trouble from now on," he was saying. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to return to my duties. Miss Gainsborough. Mrs. Gainsborough. Miss Lockheart. Soldier Strife." 

"What was that all about?" Tifa asked, as Mrs Gainsborough slipped past the rest of us to seat herself by her daughter's bedside. 

Aerith smiled. "He was just being a show-off. Proving that the Turks know about _all_ of us. Except Nanaki, I guess. But that isn't really like him—Tseng is usually very sweet. He gave me this." She lightly touched a potted plant sitting on the bedside table. 

"Did you check it for bugs? The listening-device kind, I mean?" I asked. "You know Zack would say exactly the same thing," I added, as Aerith gave me a Look. "The Turks can only be trusted so far." If at all. Okay, in all fairness, Aerith probably knew Tseng better than I knew any Turk, Vincent included, but still . . . 

"I don't care if they listen to us," Aerith said. "I think things have gotten past the point where I can hope to hide anything. Even if I had been trying all that hard to begin with." 

"You are alright, though," Mrs. Gainsborough said. She didn't bend the words up into a question at the end of the sentence, as though she could turn it into a fact just by saying it that way. 

"I'm fine. They're just being really careful, because they had to use an experimental treatment. But it looks like I'm going to keep my arm, and there's no infection." 

Mrs. Gainsborough blanched. I guess Zack hadn't told her about Aerith' arm when he'd had that message sent down to her. I'll give Aerith' mom this, though: she recovered quickly. And she'd brought _cookies_. _Chocolate chip_ cookies. I hadn't had homemade cookies since I'd first come to Midgar. 

_I think . . . while we were in Nibelheim, maybe I should have . . ._ A cookie snapped between my fingers and smudged my hand with chocolate. There was a letter from my mother sitting on the desk in my new quarters, waiting for a reply. I hadn't written one yet. Things had been too crazy . . . Oh, hell, I knew that was just an excuse. I just wasn't any _good_ at writing. And now that I had actual _news_ to pass on—about my making SOLDIER, about Sephiroth officially becoming my mentor, and about Tifa—well, that just made it even harder, somehow. 

Zack would have said, _Just do it._ Like it was that easy. And maybe for him, it was. He wasn't the kind of person who got himself tied into knots over things like that. 

"Did anyone ever figure out what Doctor Hojo wanted a Cetra for?" Nanaki asked suddenly, eyeing the remaining cookies. Who would have thought that a dog-cat-person would have a sweet tooth? Or that he'd get Tifa trained so quickly, because she passed him one the moment she realized he was looking. 

"I think the current theory is 'just because'," I told my cookie. "General Sephiroth managed to get some information about the Neo-Midgar Project out of what's left of the Board of Directors, and he says it's a joke, something Hojo must have been using to pull the wool over the President's eyes. Other than that, no one's managed to find a real reason yet, except that Hojo had the habit of . . . collecting unusual genes. Sort of like a hobby." 

Tifa's mouth dropped open. "He kidnapped Aerith and Nanaki—and me!—because of a _hobby_?!" 

"I wouldn't have called it that," Nanaki said, tail twitching. "I was in that lab for far longer than either of you, with more opportunities to observe. Hojo's interest in unusual lifeforms struck me as something closer to an obsession than a mere hobby. Or perhaps a life's work. He often spoke of creating a superior being by combining what he called 'lesser creatures'." 

And Sephiroth was his biggest success so far, created by Hojo mixing his _own_ genes and those of another human with those of a . . . thing. It made you wonder what he was going to do for an encore. Or maybe he was investigating other lifeforms to make sure Sephiroth remained the pinnacle of creation . . . 

_You know what? I really don't want to think about this._

"I'm not that much different from anyone else, though," Aerith said. "Being able to hear the voice of the Planet . . . it isn't _useful_ in any way that I can think of." 

I licked my lips. "What kind of things does it tell you?" 

"It depends on which voice is speaking. Once one of them told me that a Wutainese antique I was looking at in a stall at the Wall Market was a fake. Another one gave me a bunch of tips on chocobo racing one time—I never heard from that one again, though. And, well . . . I wasn't completely truthful with you before. There _is_ a sort of collective voice, but it doesn't really _talk_. If I try to ask it questions, it's like getting a response from an orchestra and having to figure out what the song is meant to say." 

"Does that mean we all have theme songs or something?" Zack said from the doorway. "That is _so_ cool. Hey, cookies!" 

Aerith smiled and held the plate out toward him. Zack took two, and somehow managed to juggle both of them and take off the Buster Sword without dropping anything or hitting anyone except me. Given how much space there _wasn't_ in the room right now, that was pretty incredible. 

"Everyone _does_ have a sort of 'theme song'," Aerith admitted. She looked like she was repressing giggles. "Just don't ask me to hum them." 

"Still, I'd like to know what mine's like," Zack said, stuffing the first cookie in his mouth. 

"Bouncy. Playful. But . . . strong underneath." 

"You mean like it's got a good bass line? I can live with that. What about Spiky here?" 

"Cloud's is . . . a bit like the orchestra is still tuning. I think you're still figuring out what you want to be," Aerith told me seriously. "But there's something building up in there that's like the underlayer of Zack's. You both want to protect people." She looked down, at where a certain dog-cat was licking cookie crumbs off his whiskers. "Nanaki's is a bit like that too, but his has more of a sense of time and tradition . . . I guess you could call it a tribal beat." 

For some reason, my mouth was going dry. "And . . . the General?" 

Suddenly, Aerith wasn't looking at anyone. "I'm not sure. I only met him last night, and I can't hear as clearly up here as I can when I'm nearer the ground. Part of it might even be the painkillers they gave me." 

Zack grimaced. "Seph's killed an awful lot of people. I guess it wouldn't be too surprising if he had a theme song like a B-movie villain's." 

"It's all part of the normal cycle for some creatures to kill other creatures," Nanaki said. "In Cosmo Canyon, it's taught that the Planet doesn't judge. The Lifestream accepts all and takes all in when the time comes." 

Aerith shook her head. "It isn't as simple as the Planet being angry at General Sephiroth, or hating him. It's afraid of him, but it also . . . hopes. Maybe it senses more than one thing that he is, or could become . . . I don't know." 

And part of that was probably about the whole Jenova thing, and all of it was too complicated for a newly minted Third Class named Cloud Strife. 

"I think I'd like to visit Cosmo Canyon someday," Aerith added. "It sounds like there might be people there who know the things that I never had a chance to learn." Because her real mom had died when she was still little, right. 

"Wait until the next time I have some leave, and I'll take you there," Zack offered. "Or—hey, maybe I can get Seph to arrange to ferry Nanaki back and send the two of us along." 

"If he doesn't feed you Masamune for asking," I said. "Or make you handle the requisition forms for all of SOLDIER or something." 

Zack shuddered. "I think I'd prefer Masamune. At least that would be quick. The forms, on the other hand . . . those are more like the death of a thousand cuts." He turned to Aerith, and made a sort of hangdog face. "Seriously, though, unless he clears it, you may not get to go to Cosmo Canyon any time soon. Sorry. Until we figure out what happened to Hojo, you're going to have to be guarded—that's what I came down here to tell you in the first place. It probably won't be all that much different than what's been going on all along, except that the Turks won't be hiding so hard. Seph would prefer it if you moved into the Shinra Building, I think, but he's smart enough to know you'd never leave your flowers." 

"If it's no worse than what was already going on, I think I can handle it," Zack's girlfriend said. 

"There's more." Zack reached out and snagged the last cookie—trust him to be the only one who remembered they were there. "Tifa, you're a martial artist, right? Would you mind if we made you Aerith' guard of last resort? You'd have a salary and the whole nine yards, so you wouldn't need to go out and find another job." 

Tifa looked pleased, but also skeptical. "There's a catch, isn't there?" 

"You'd be working with the Turks, since Tseng's put himself in charge of the bodyguard arrangements. That's always a catch. You might find yourself training with them, too, if he doesn't think you're up to snuff. And he probably won't." 

I was a bit surprised when Tifa nodded. Only a bit, though. I mean, we'd grown up together, so I was aware of how brave she could be—not to mention how stubborn and how thoughtless. "I know the Turks aren't nice people," she said. "But I also know they're good fighters, and Master Zangan told me I should seek additional training in styles other than his. I'll do it." 

Something roared. Everyone jumped except Aerith, who was hiding a smile again, and Zack, who pulled out his PHS. I wondered whose calls he thought needed a ringtone like that. 

"Maybe I should've stuck with the trumpets. Ugh, guess my break's over." Which meant Sephiroth, I was willing to bet. "Next time someone brings cookies, call me, okay?" 

There were some things about Zack that never changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zack has a really low coolness threshold. Also, cookies! Cookies make everything better. ;)


	29. Chapter 29

**Vincent**

The faded print fuzzed in front of my eyes, and I leaned back and rubbed them with my good hand. An absent glance at the PHS I'd left lying on the desk told me that it was 3:07 AM, and I hadn't slept in twenty-seven hours. Which was fine—as far as I could tell, I didn't need much sleep anymore. A couple of hours every other day seemed to be enough. And the less I slept, the less Chaos would insinuate itself into my dreams. 

_What do I even want anymore?_

Anna. I hadn't thought about Anna in a very long time. I'd almost forgotten I'd ever had a sister, and I couldn't remember what she had looked like. Trying to call up that last day when my father had come to take me back to Midgar with him only produced a sort of girl-child-shaped blob waving good-bye. It had just been too long. The memories of the time since Chaos had dug itself a nest in my brain had a painful, jagged-edged clarity to them, but everything from before was softer, blurred. Unenhanced human memory, versus that of whatever I was now. 

As I'd said to her daughter, Anna didn't need me. She'd clearly made a life for herself, married, had children. I couldn't imagine that my absence was a significant gap in that life, anymore than hers created one in mine. Still, I couldn't help wondering whether I'd lost something. 

_Do I want to go back?_

It wasn't possible, I knew. You couldn't turn back time just because you wanted to. And where was it, anyway? The moment where everything had broken. The one moment I would have to change—wasn't that how that story was always supposed to work? Shooting Hojo before he could do his damage, or standing guard over Jenova's resting place and attacking whoever came to dig it up. Either of those things would have invalidated the current situation and negated Sephiroth's pain, but . . . 

_I don't want him never to have existed._

It was a horribly selfish thought. Sephiroth had spent many more years subject to Hojo's tender mercies than I had, and I knew what kind of pain he must have experienced. But without those pressures, he wouldn't be the quiet man with the quick mind, dry sense of humour, and extreme gift for violence who mirrored me so well. 

There's a reason that Turks normally work in partnered pairs. It's dangerous for someone whose job is covert illegal mayhem to form bonds with outsiders, but at the same time, no human can exist in complete isolation. You need to have at least one person you can trust. 

I wasn't sure why or how my subconscious had decided to accept Sephiroth as my partner, but it was becoming clear to me that we were locked in that kind of relationship. Absolute trust, in life and death. What defines a partner isn't his willingness to save you, but his willingness to do what's necessary if saving you proves impossible, and Sephiroth had long since passed that test. 

«You still won't admit what you really want, will you?» 

"Why are you so fixated on that?" I murmured to the empty room—in the interest of not waking Cloud, who did need to sleep, I'd hauled the stack of Gast's old files I'd scavenged from the lab down to my temporary office on the thirteenth floor. 

«Because part of our inability to function properly together is due to your unwillingness to accept your own desires. It may surprise you to know that I don't enjoy fighting you. An armed standoff has never been what I wanted.» 

"No, you want to take over." 

Frustration. It had been a while since I'd last picked up on Chaos' emotions. It was . . . disconcerting. «Less now that I did when you were acting like a limp rag and hiding us away. It isn't in my nature to hide. At least now you're doing _something_. And you seem to have found the world's current fulcrum. Not that you have any idea what that means, or what to do with it.» 

"Why don't you tell me, then?" 

«Because I'm not nearly that well disposed toward you, host-mine. You still infuriate me.» 

Chaos faded out again—deliberately pushing itself down to the level it rested at when it was dormant. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, and picked up the file again. More of Gast's research on the Cetra. I knew it wasn't complete. Hojo seemed to have pulled some documents from these folders, perhaps to help him create the farrago of nonsense we'd found in Nibelheim, and then left the rest to rot in that back room. Some of it wasn't even Gast's research, but copies of even older materials. I snorted as I recognized a reproduction of one particular bas-relief. My father had had a much larger and more detailed version of that one mounted on the wall of his study. It had stuck in my mind because an image of women apparently masturbating with materia had been memorable to the teenaged boy that I'd been then. The only thing of Gast's on the page was a one-word note: _Immortalis?_

The word was vaguely familiar, but it took me a while to remember where I'd encountered it before. Chaos' ramblings, in reference to Sephiroth. Which had nothing I could see to do with the picture, but perhaps Gast had just been using this sheet for scrap paper. 

Other than that, the folder contained a lot of copies of engravings of Cetra writing. Some had translations written as marginalia, but most were mute of any significance. Not that the bits that _had_ been translated seemed to mean anything either. "The mind dwells within the crystal"? "Shield and sword"? "Chaos foretells the end of all things"? 

«Every time.» The dark whisper in my mind was accompanied by unpleasant laughter. I ignored it, and set the folder aside. Reached for another one, and stopped. _No._ I was only tying myself into knots here. Time to go somewhere else for a bit. Maybe even get a bit of what passed for fresh air in Midgar. 

When I'd been sent off to Nibelheim, even the blueprints for the Shinra Building hadn't been complete yet. There had been no plans for the roof other than "it has to have one", but I'd noticed the fire stairs continuing on up past the President's penthouse office and knew that the last door at the top probably accessed it. And for evacuation-related reasons, it almost had to be left unlocked. 

The roof itself turned out to be utilitarian, studded with bits of ventilation equipment, with a railing around the edge the only concession to the fact that people might go up there. But it was open to the air, and even above the worst of the smog from the city below, and I could see a few stars. 

To my surprise, I wasn't alone up here, despite the hour. A small, slender human figure stood by one of the rails, looking out over the city. I hadn't bothered to hide my approach or ease the door open quietly, and she had turned to face me, lab coat blowing in the wind. 

"Uncle Vincent." 

"Doctor Rayleigh." 

When she saw I had no intention of being informal with her, she didn't insist. Instead, she turned back toward the edge of the roof and the view beyond, the lights of the Plate far below distorted by smudges of smog and steam. 

"I suppose you couldn't sleep either," she said. 

I shrugged. "I don't need much." 

"I decided to give up, the second time I woke up with nightmares. A lot of what Hojo left behind is . . . ugh." She shook her head. "I think I understand why he wrote me up so severely for losing that data disc, now. He didn't care about what was on it, he just wanted me out of there. Because I still had some sense of ethics. I'm not looking forward to having the rest of the files decoded." She forced a smile. "I made the mistake of looking for the ones on you, you see. Because I was curious. I wish I could take that back now . . . but I don't suppose it matters, because no one who does that kind of thing only does it once. Human experimentation without consent . . ." Another headshake, this one far more violent. "Hojo is the kind of person who gives the profession of research scientist a bad name. I . . . threw up when I was partway through reading that file. Somewhere around the bit where he talked about dousing you with acid, I think." 

"I don't remember that, but I was pretty much out of it from the mako and the drugs, and when I was lucid, Hojo seldom bothered to explain what he was doing, or why." Still, I found myself fingering Cerberus. If we ever found the bastard, I would shoot him like a mad dog. He was too dangerous to be left alive. 

"I don't understand how you can say that as though it doesn't bother you." 

I shrugged again. "It's over and done with. I can't change the past, and I doubt much of what he did to me is reversible. I can live as what I am now, or I can die . . . but if I kill myself, Hojo wins. If I lose my reason, Hojo wins. So I have no intention of doing either." 

I would walk ten miles barefoot over broken glass in the middle of the Corel desert at high noon if it meant Hojo would fail at something, and I suspect a little of that leached through into my voice, because Rayleigh gave me an odd look. 

When I spoke again, I made an effort to keep my tone level and indifferent. "I'd like to see Hojo's files on me, if possible." 

"I'll have them sent to your office, if you have one." 

I nodded. "Thirteenth floor. Although they may be moving me, now." 

"Mmm." A long silence. "This . . . is awkward. Mom . . . for so many years after they sent the death notice, she wondered what had happened . . . and now you're here, and . . . I have no idea what to say. Or if it even matters. I guess it probably doesn't. Like you said, it's over and done with. It's alright if you don't want to . . . be family. By most standards, I suppose you never were." 

I found that I didn't know how to respond to that. Because I already knew she was right. I wasn't about to let myself be persuaded to make myself known to a group of strangers just because they happened to be related to my mother. It would just cause me discomfort and turn them into targets for Hojo. The miserable little bastard of a scientist loved playing with his specimens' emotions. So I would simply refuse to pick up the dice. I had a partner. Who was capable of taking care of himself. That would have to be enough. 

In the back of my mind, Chaos laughed. 

"Go back to bed, Doctor," I said at last. "You still have a great deal more data to decipher, and I think we would all prefer that you make no mistakes. And I would suggest you find yourself a materia that can be used to cast Sleepel, because the contents of those files aren't likely to become more pleasant from here." 

"I don't think I want to know how it could get worse." 

Better to prepare her, probably. "Hojo's experimental subjects included minor children. So did Hollander's, from what I understand, although I don't know how much of his data was retained after he defected. I would suggest not playing back any video or audio that you find. Especially video." It would at least protect a bit of Sephiroth's privacy. What little of that Lucrecia's son had ever had to start with. 

Rayleigh swallowed visibly. "Ugh. That's . . . All right. _All right._ Thank you for the warning. On that cheerful note, I think I'm going to go see if Medical will give me a prescription for antidepressants. I don't think forcing myself to rest periodically with a Sleepel is going to be enough." 

I didn't watch her go. Instead, I went to the railing, and let the foul, warm wind rising off Midgar play with my hair as I looked down. The glow from the mako reactors was exactly the colour of Sephiroth's eyes. 

_I've made a choice. It wasn't even hard._ Maybe that was because I had made this one before. And I hadn't chosen "family" that time, either. 

My new partner would likely never know. And if he did find out, he would never understand. If there was anyone in this world who had fewer ties than I did, it was Sephiroth. But you didn't need that many if the ones you did have were strong enough. 

_I won't let you fall._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, Vincent will get back into contact with his family before the end of the 'fic, but not for a while yet.


	30. Chapter 30

**???**

Everything was green. 

I remembered hating green. This particular green. Something about eyes. Eyes that glowed. Eyes that looked at me like I was a bug hitching my way along the floor. But I wasn't a bug, I was . . . I was . . . _lost and floating away . . ._

Green. Not all uniformly the same green, though. There were dark spots, and light ones. Shapes. Walls. A . . . room? A room with a curving wall between me and it. If I forced one of my arms up, I could feel the glass under my fingers . . . _fingers, hands, arms . . . I have hands?_

Sometimes my thoughts just sort of stopped, or fell out of my head like spent bullets from Tseng's gun. I was pretty sure it was because of the hateful, hateful green. _Tseng?_

Black hair. Dark eyes. Quiet, but polite, and oh-so-strong. He'd . . . tried to . . . _red in front of me . . . what was red? What was green?_

Movement. Something more than bubbles in the _green_ , outside the clear, curving wall. Was that a face? It looked wrong, spread out sideways . . . the curve, and the green . . . 

Sounds. Words? 

"Such poor material, but I suppose it will have to do. One can't be too particular about something snatched opportunistically, after all." 

I knew that voice. It felt . . . slimy. Disgusting. Not hateful, like the green eyes. Just unpleasant. 

The figure outside was wearing something pale. I tried to focus on it as he moved around the room. Closer to me first, and looking down, then further away. Bending over something dark. Metal? 

"Gast was always such a fool. This is clearly a transmitter. A beacon. The question is, if it was found with _her_ , then what was it meant to summon? Are there others, my goddess? Do they yet listen for your call?" The figure in pale clothes circled the dark thing. "An entire army of perfect beings for my Sephiroth to command . . . if I can only repair what lies here. Damn Gast for leaving it in this state." 

_What if you're wrong?_ I wondered. He certainly sounded as though he had a screw loose, whoever he was . . . name . . . _should know his name . . ._

I tried to keep my eyes open, to keep watching, but . . . _so tired . . ._

Green to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cue ominous music again. (And yes, this is the shortest chapter in the entire 'fic. Normally I have a lower length limit, but I ignored it for this particular narrator.)


	31. Chapter 31

**Zack**

Checking the map in my hand, I jabbed a couple of push-pins, each representing an abnormal monster sighting, into the bigger map on the wall of the 49th-floor lounge. Then I stood back to consider the effect. 

It wasn't pretty. The pins came in clear clusters, always near population centers. The largest grouping was near Midgar. The next largest were Corel and Junon—half those pins were blue, for aquatic monsters. Smaller groups marked Nibelheim, Gongaga, Fort Condor, Rocket Town, Icicle Inn, and Casa del Sol, and then there were a few stray pins near Mideel, Wutai, and the remains of Modeoheim. 

"Mako," Seph said quietly from behind me. "Mako and reactors, with the reactors somehow attracting more. It's the only possible common factor." 

I grimaced, because I knew he was right. There was nothing around Kalm except for a few stray bits of Midgar-aura—Kalm got its electricity from the Midgar reactors. And you could predict the size of a group of pins if you knew what kind of reactor was at the center. The old half-mothballed reactor at Nibelheim and the new pocket-style ones in places like Icicle Inn attracted fewer monsters than the big reactors here in the city. 

"It bothers me more that we've had so many in such a short time." Vince had to have come in with Sephiroth. Since being elevated to First Class, he'd stopped wearing an exact regulation uniform. Instead, he'd switched to wedging his sabatons over a set of SOLDIER boots, and wearing trousers more fitted than the issue ones, that worked better with his holster. The result was still somehow recognizable as a SOLDIER uniform, though. Probably because the first thing most people noticed was the combination of ribbed turtleneck, wide belt, and arms bare from shoulder to wrist. At least he'd ditched the cape. 

Seph hadn't had a choice about up-Classing _someone_ , because with all the monster reports coming in, we'd badly needed another First, and Vince was the only person we had with enough fighting power. From the General having no excuse at all to leave the city, we'd gone to where we didn't have enough competent people to respond to all the calls for help. Really, it was a bit surprising that we were all in one room right now. The last time had been three days ago, when I'd gotten back from Corel just in time to catch Seph grabbing his overnight bag for a trip to Icicle Inn. 

"There've always been more monsters around the reactors, though," I pointed out. 

"More, yes, but not like this," Seph said. 

"I was at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Corel reactor," Vincent added. "Nothing like this happened. There was merely an uptick in the numbers of the normal monsters native to that region—about thirty percent, if I recall. And it took several months to build up." 

"Why, though? It isn't like giving them a few reactor engineers to try to eat would help them out that much." I scratched my head. 

"I think the theory at the time was that the increased mako movement stimulated them and caused extra breeding cycles." 

"Which does nothing to explain our current problem," Seph finished. 

"Yeah, not with monsters showing up in places where they've never been seen before. Unless Hojo has some kind of super-efficient monster-shipment service going on that we didn't know about . . ." 

Seph gave me one of those raised-eyebrow looks of his—the "where did this ill-bred puppy come from, and who let it piddle on the carpet?" kind. He never has thought much of my jokes. 

" . . . Yeah, didn't think so," I admitted. "Maybe it's something more like how the very first monsters appeared. However that happened." I mean, even I knew monsters were different from humans or dogs or chocobos, 'cause only monsters evaporate into green light when they die. Like they don't really have bodies or something. Except that they do, or they wouldn't be able to make holes in people. 

Seph and Vincent exchanged a look that was completely different from the one Seph had just given me. They did that often enough that I'd started getting used to it. It was a bit of a relief, actually. That Seph had someone else now. That I didn't have to support him alone. 

"Something for the Science Department to answer," Sephiroth said. "Although . . . if we turn it around . . . why have such a fascination with attacking the reactors? If they wanted accessible mako, the ideal places would be Mideel, Wutai, and the far north. The natural rifts that have nothing built on top of them. In particular, it makes no sense that so many of them are appearing around Midgar. The wastelands are too depleted to feed additional populations, and almost no mako escapes the area." 

An idea poked me. "What if it really is an attack? Someone trying to shut down the reactors?" 

"With trained monsters?" Vincent didn't bother to add anything like _that's ridiculous_ when his tone had already said it all. 

"Even if we accept it as a possibility, there are too many entities who might want to disrupt Shinra in general or the reactors specifically for us to be able to figure out who is responsible. AVALANCHE, Wutai, Hojo. Scarlet. Any remnant Genesis copies. The Planet itself, if we also accept the premise that it has some level of sentience." 

I grinned. "Well, that's one possibility we can eliminate quickly, right? All we have to do is ask someone who can talk to it." 

Seph closed his eyes for just a second, and shook his head. "Fine. You're off-duty until tomorrow morning, barring extreme emergency. Vincent and I will take care of anything that comes up. Dismissed." 

"Thanks a million, Seph!" It would be the first chance I'd had to see Aerith since she'd gotten out of Medical. I was already double-timing it to the elevator. 

Even if the top of Shinra Tower had been pruned a bit when Hojo let loose, the upper city hadn't changed at all. Same ridiculous bustle. Same need to show ID at the train station. The members of the new Board of Directors were still thrashing around trying to find their feet, judging from what Seph said, so they were letting the city run itself as much as possible. 

The slums, though . . . The slums were different, although it was hard to put a finger on how. Same unpleasant smell. Same twilight and lack of vegetation. But everything felt kind of tense in a way that it hadn't before. Up Above had changed, and Down Below was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because it always had before. 

I had to kill three hell houses on my way from the train station to Aerith' church. They weren't uncommon monsters here, but they normally hid a lot better than they were managing today. Or maybe I was just on edge from having spent my morning getting rid of a nest of zolokalter that had sprung up on the ocean cliffs northwest of the city when they were supposed to be up north on the other side of the ocean. Ugly little critters, and they'd been crawling into the crevices in the rock so that it took forever to kill them. I never thought I'd find myself saying so, but I preferred the bigger monsters. Ten behemoths were easier to handle than one of those nasty poisonous scuttly little . . . things. 

Getting to the church itself was a relief and a half, and not just because it didn't stink. The tense feeling just didn't exist here. Even though Reno waved at me as I came in, and Tifa was over in a corner shadowboxing while Aerith tended her flowers. As I moved toward the front of the building, Nanaki raised his head over the back of a pew, looked at me, then yawned and lowered it again. 

It was so perfectly peaceful it was almost scary. 

"Zack!" Aerith stood up and moved away from the flowers, meeting me with a hug several steps away from the patch of green, yellow, and white. I'd promised her many times never to step on them again, but I don't know if she really believed me. 

I grinned. "I've got the afternoon off unless something really catastrophic happens. Hey, babe, why don't I show you a good time?" And I wiggled my hips a bit. 

Aerith swatted me on the shoulder, but she was laughing. "You're hopeless, Zack Fair!" 

"Yeah, but you wouldn't like me nearly so much if I wasn't," I pointed out. 

"Maybe not," she admitted. "Right now, I'm just glad you're here." 

"With all the new friends you've been making lately, I was afraid you would have forgotten me." 

"They're not my _boyfriend_ , silly. I mean, can you see me dating Tifa? Or _Nanaki_?" 

I wasn't about to tell her that, judging from some of the files we had found, having her "date" Nanaki was one of the things Hojo had in mind. Although even Doctor Rayleigh wasn't sure how he'd expected to make it _work_. "What about Tseng?" 

"Tseng is more like a big brother. Don't tell me that you're jealous!" 

We sat down together on one of the pews, on the opposite side of the aisle from Nanaki. Aerith sat on my left, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. That kept my right hand free to grab the Buster Sword from where I'd propped it. Just in cases we had a sudden invasion of hedgehog pies or something. 

"So, how are things up in the Tower, other than the fact General Sephiroth is running you ragged?" Aerith asked. 

"It isn't like he has much choice either— _he_ didn't ask someone to produce all the extra monsters. Let's see . . . They're still working on Hojo's files, for starters. Some of them are triple-encrypted or something. Mostly about Jenova. They did get all Seph's records open, and everything about Project G that's still in existence." For all the good it did, now that Angeal was dead. "The good news is that Doctor Rayleigh thinks Hojo was probably right that . . . what happened to Genesis and Angeal . . . was due to Hollander's screw-ups, and the rest of us, including Seph, are stable." 

"I'm sorry this didn't happen soon enough to save them." Aerith knew how I felt about Angeal. She'd been the one to hold me one drunken night as I'd cried and sworn and splintered one of the pews here in the church, trying to let some tiny part of my emotions out before they turned to poison. Seph was the only other person I could have talked to, and given how controlled he was all the time, he wouldn't have understood. 

"I get the impression that would have taken a miracle." And it made me so mad. Yeah, Genesis had been a pain in the ass, but Angeal had been a great man. Until he'd started coming apart. 

I touched the scar on my cheek, the one I'd deliberately bandaged up with the skin a bit askew, and then not let anyone Cure. So that it would leave a mark. So that I would never, ever, ever forget. Even if I lost the Buster Sword. Even if I lost my _mind_. 

"Miracles have to be possible. Somehow. But that really doesn't help, does it? I just wish there were something I could do." 

"All you have to do is be you," I said, burying my face in her hair. 

"That's sweet, Zack, but it isn't . . . It makes me feel inadequate. Right now, I'm a burden. To you, Tifa, Tseng—even General Sephiroth. I'm just sucking up resources and I'm not doing anything useful. I mean, I'm not even playing bait!" 

"For Hojo? Ugh, that would be unsafe in a really big way. Even if he's still interested after sprouting tentacles and taking off with Rufus Shinra. Look, if you want to do something useful—" Wait. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. _Too late now, Zack, you dope._

"What is it?" Aerith asked instantly. Just like I'd known she would. 

"Well, um, Seph and Vince and I were having a talk earlier about all the monsters that've been turning up where they shouldn't be lately . . . and they're all popping up around reactors or natural mako hot spots. But mako . . . that's the Lifestream, right? The thing that you talk to? Do you think there's a way you can ask it where the monsters are coming from? Or why they're coming?" 

"I can try, but chances are that I won't get anything intelligible. And if I do, we can't trust it." 

"The clear voices in the stream are the spirits of the dead," Nanaki said suddenly. "The ones who have something tying them so strongly to life that they refuse to let go. The Planet's true voice has a difficult time making itself understood to the incarnate. Or that's what I was always told. There are no Cetra in Cosmo Canyon anymore to confirm it, and haven't been for hundreds of years." 

"You're telling me that Aerith hears—" 

"Dead people," the lady herself confirmed. "Apparently. Sometimes. It does explain the thing with the chocobo racing tips—why would the spirit of the Planet even know what a chocobo race was?" 

"Well, if you're okay with it, I guess it's all right. Kind of creepy, though." And I hugged her a little more tightly. 

"It isn't like talking to a ghost, silly. More like having someone call you on a PHS. Well, someone really drunk or drugged that you've never met before, who dialed your number by poking the buttons at random. There's no physical presence, and it's difficult to make them talk about anything but what's stuck in their minds. Anyway, it isn't something I do on purpose, and it doesn't happen very often. The Planet itself, I can contact reliably, but it doesn't always understand what I'm telling it, or answer in a way that makes sense." 

"Sounds awkward." 

"Well, I don't normally try to get it to answer specific questions. But if you want me to, I'll try. I admit it would be nice if we could get the monsters to calm down, so that you wouldn't have to be away quite as much." 

"I appreciate it. Don't have it send them all away or anything, though. Seph gets really grumpy when he doesn't have an excuse to leave Midgar every few days." 

Aerith giggled. "That must be awful. He's intimidating enough when he's normal." 

I wouldn't say that Seph had been _normal_ the one time she'd met him, but whatever. Maybe he had been, until I'd jammed my foot into my mouth about the Jenova stuff again. "Yeah, so you can see why I think it's a big deal. So we need to keep some of the monsters, but having fewer of them turning up on a looser schedule would be nice." 

"I'll see what I can do. It should only take a few minutes." She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek as she slipped out from under my arm and walked out into the field of flowers. Slowly, she sank to her knees, bowed her head, and clasped her hands. Praying, it looked like. Well, this _was_ a church. Or had been. Surely someone had . . . what was the word . . . deconsecrated it, before it had been allowed to fall into this state, right? What had they even worshipped here? I didn't, I realized, really know all that much about religion. Seeing as how it was a dead concept everywhere except Wutai these days. 

Aerith' forehead wrinkled, and it looked like she was concentrating hard. All the light coming down through the hole in the ceiling and the well in the Plate above seemed to have gathered around her. 

And then . . . I don't know. Something. Something happened that I didn't have any words for, but it felt like every hair on my body was standing on end. And Aerith' eyes snapped open as she let out a choked gasp. 

I went straight to her—I didn't care how many flowers I crushed, she'd grow more, she always did—crouched down beside her, and wrapped my arms around her. 

"C'mon, I don't know what that was, but relax and let it go, okay?" 

"I . . . Zack. The Planet." 

"I guess it likes those monsters right where they are or something, right?" 

"I didn't even get a chance to ask. That was . . . it screamed." 

"It . . . what? You're saying the _Planet_ screamed? At you?" 

"I don't think it even knew I was listening. It just screamed. It's frightened, Zack. Really frightened. Of something from above. From the sky. But that was the only thing I understood. And now I'm afraid to try again." 

"You don't have to. Not right now. I'll tell Seph and let him figure out what to do." 

"That's always your answer when something you can't handle comes up." Her smile was back, though. Scared and wavering, but definitely there. 

"That's because it usually works. Seph is scary-smart." 

"He's a strange man." 

"Yeah, but don't hold it against him." Seph had his problems, although I hadn't realized just how _many_ of them there were until I'd taken that horrible trip to the Science Department with him. I wondered if there was a way to get the tattoo off his hand, and what they'd even used to put it there in the first place—a SOLDIER's body tends to clean up stuff that doesn't belong. 

"I don't. I . . . think he means well. As much as he can." 

"Yeah." 

"Zack?" 

"Mmm?" 

"Can we just stay like this for a little while?" 

"As long as you need." Because, even if it was a little sappy to admit it, I could never deny Aerith anything.


	32. Chapter 32

**Sephiroth**

The door to the boardroom shut behind me with a firm _chunk_ , and I headed for the elevators, since the stairwell wouldn't be private again until the workmen were done hanging the new doors, and it had been indicated that disruption of their work was Not Welcome. All my fault that that had to be done in the first place, of course. Even though cutting the old doors apart had seemed like a good idea at the time. Both times. 

Still, I found myself frowning at the mirror finish on the outer sliding doors as I waited for the elevator proper to arrive. I had never minded waiting when there was a good reason for it, but given that taking the stairs was much faster and didn't require any dead time, being forced to stand here was annoying. 

"Going down, General?" 

"Scarlet." I offered her only the curtest of acknowledgements, hoping it would make her curb the sultry note in her voice. 

She put her hand on my arm, and it was all I could do not to jerk away from her. _Control. This is no different from the labs._ At least, here and now, I didn't have to control my body's other involuntary reaction as well. There was no way she would be able to feel the goosebumps through two layers of leather. 

"You never do change. Solid ice. I wonder how much fire is hidden underneath all those layers of self-control?" 

I wondered if she realized how much I could read of how she actually felt as she took a half-step closer and brushed her leg against mine. No scent of arousal through the chemical unpleasantness of her perfume, pupils not dilated in the least, no hint of a flush on the surface of her skin. Her flirtation was as calculated as a budget report from Accounting. 

The elevator arrived at that moment. Naturally she followed me aboard. I positioned myself right beside the buttons as I selected my floor, to ensure that she couldn't use an emergency stop to prolong this encounter. Knowing Scarlet, the precaution was not paranoid in the least. 

In the restricted space, however, I couldn't back away from her as she toyed with the collar of my coat without _looking_ as though I were fleeing. 

_I think I may just jump out a window next time I need to get to a lower floor._

"They say you don't like blondes," she whispered throatily in my ear, putting her hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she leaned into me. "But I don't think that's true, is it? And if it is . . . I can always. Dye. It." Her finger traced a path down the side of my neck, and it was more than I could stand. 

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away, having to be oh-so-careful not to squeeze too tightly and shatter the bone. "I'm not interested in older women," I said—it was the best retort I could come up with at the time, and there _was_ an age difference of six or seven years between us. 

Scarlet wasn't giving up. She smiled and said, "I can be as young as you want." 

Fortunately, the elevator reached the fiftieth floor at that point, and the doors slid open. I had to use my grip on Scarlet's wrist to shift her out of my way before I could make my exit. 

My stride as I headed for my office was . . . perhaps crisper than usual. I wished I knew of a better way to deal with Scarlet. She refused to be discouraged verbally, and I knew that employing my capacity for destructive violence against her would cause all sorts of trouble. Nor did I have any useful blackmail material on her, although if she persisted in trying to ooze her way into my bedroom, I might just see if I could turn something up. 

My secretary had long since learned to keep her mouth shut, and greeted me with a nod and a gesture. I had the door to the inner office closed before I realized I wasn't alone there. Vincent's lack of a heartbeat made him the only person I knew who could sneak up on me that way. 

"You have lipstick on your collar," he said, raising an eyebrow in enquiry. 

"Scarlet ambushed me in the elevator." And must have smudged me when she'd been trying to whisper in my ear. I retrieved a tissue from the seldom-used box on my desk and rubbed what I thought was the spot most likely affected. It came away smeared with a red just a little too bluish to look like blood. "Unfortunately, killing her isn't an option right now." 

"If Shinra is destabilized any more than it has been already, its information network might collapse," Vincent agreed. "Without it, our chances of finding Hojo become extremely slim." He hesitated before adding, "Would she be worth cultivating for information? Of the two surviving members of the old Board of Directors, she was the closest to the President and had the highest clearance. She may know something useful." 

It wasn't an unreasonable suggestion, but . . . "I doubt I could keep a front up successfully for long enough to get anything out of her. Scarlet is extremely tactile. She would notice within ten minutes that she was making my skin crawl." 

"I was thinking of having Reno do it. Although considering what he'd probably ask for in return, that might not be such a good idea. And I have no idea if she likes redheads." 

"You can't stand her either," I observed, a little surprised. "I thought Turks had to be able to seduce on command." 

Vincent shrugged. "Some can. I was always better at shooting people in the dark. I'm not that good at lying with my body—I can hold still through just about anything, but for a seduction mission, that isn't good enough." 

I shook my head slightly— _we really are alike, aren't we?_ Glancing at the thick stacks of paper on my desk (Shinra was supposed to be switching to electronic documents, but I expected that would be complete around the time Ifrit took up ice skating as a hobby), I also thought I should have been spending some time clearing it before I got called away again. I had no time to waste on idle conversation with a friend. 

There was no doubt that Vincent was that. Possibly the closest friend I had ever had. The thought was . . . a little stunning. A _Turk_ that I had known for about two weeks, and he had gotten more thoroughly under my skin than anyone else I had ever met. Angeal and Genesis included. And all it had needed was a bit of understanding silence. 

_I don't know what I'll do if you ever leave._

Perhaps it was to chase that question out of my head that I asked the question I'd been avoiding for the past two weeks: "After we've dealt with Hojo, what do you intend to do?" 

There was that familiar shrug again. "Whatever you need me to." 

"For how long?" I hadn't intended to ask the question so sharply, but it was out there now. Let him answer it. 

"Until you tell me to leave, I suppose. I told you before: you and Hojo are the reasons I'm here. If you don't need me, I'll just go back to my coffin." 

"And not back to the Turks?" 

Vincent waved that away. "Not even if they wanted me back. Which they don't. And there isn't a single one of them that I'd trust to deal with Chaos if it got loose. You're the only person I've met so far who's strong enough to handle it." 

So all those promises about killing each other had meant something after all. Zack would no doubt have considered it a very disturbing basis on which to form a friendship, but Zack . . . was human. He didn't know what it was like to have a monster inside him, trying to claw its way out. 

_Not a binary choice,_ I reminded myself. I'd taken to repeating those words like a mantra whenever the occasion seemed to call for it. I suspected they might yet save my life, or at least my sanity. 

I wondered sometimes whether, if I'd been able to quote that line of Vincent's to Angeal, I would have been able to stop him from making his largest and most terrible mistake. 

"So I suppose the real question is what _you_ intend to do after Hojo's finally dead," Vincent was saying. 

I drew in a breath to say, _Leave Shinra_ , and then let it out again without speaking. Partly because it wasn't really an answer—leave Shinra, and then what? Join AVALANCHE? Become a mercenary monster hunter in the hinterlands? Fighting was all I knew . . . and, to be honest, I enjoyed it. Pitting strength against strength, with the price of losing the wager being my life. I knew there was nothing else that would ever be able to give me the same thrill. 

The other reason the words died on my tongue was more subtle. Something about Zack's easy grin and Cloud Strife's serious blue eyes and the knowledge that I would effectively be abandoning them here. Along with all the other SOLDIERs who had believed in me enough not to run away with Genesis. 

None of that was a responsibility I had ever sought, but it was mine now. And even after Hojo was gone, there would still be monsters out there that needed to be killed back on a regular basis. Some of them, especially in the north, were dangerous enough that they _had_ to be handled by specialist fighters. If the rest of Shinra collapsed tomorrow, I would do my best to maintain SOLDIER in some form, at least while enough enhanced personnel still existed to make it workable. 

Angeal would have asked me about dreams. For a long time, the only thing I'd dreamed of was getting _answers_. Knowledge of what Hojo was hiding from me. And now I had most of that, and the remaining puzzle pieces would be forthcoming as soon as the Turks could decrypt them. I'd never thought beyond discovering the truth and destroying Hojo. I couldn't think of anything else I wanted on more than a superficial level. 

Well, then. Responsibility would have to substitute for now, and perhaps one day I would figure out of there were any other desires hiding underneath the mess of psychological debris piled inside my head. 

Vincent was still waiting, in patient silence, for the answer to his question. 

"I don't know," I admitted. And received a nod in return. _We'll figure it out,_ Vincent seemed to say without speaking. 

In the meanwhile, I still had somewhere between five and six hundred individual paper forms to process (judging from the height of the stacks), as well as whatever was waiting on the computer. But I held off for a few more moments, knowing that once I started working, Vincent would leave. 

That turned out to be long enough for my secretary to knock at the door. "More monster reports, General." 

"Bring them in," I said, and a few moments later, I had some additional sheets of paper to work through. I skimmed quickly, sorting them by level and priority. There were four reports that really deserved the attention of a First Class, including one that would have been given to a full team of First Classes in the days when we'd still had that many: a dragon zombie near Mideel. I would have to take that one myself. One for Wutai—I handed that sheet to Vincent, who took it, skimmed the contents, and nodded. The other two were for Corel and Gongaga. Zack would have to take those as a single extended mission, even if I hated doing that to him. We were all tired, but of the three of us, he was the least enhanced, and therefore needed the most rest. 

Truth be told, I was worried we were getting distracted. Monster attacks were a neverending problem, like the tide wearing away at a sea cliff. If we kept having to scramble all personnel to deal with them, we wouldn't have enough people left to deal with anything else that came up. Including Hojo, but I still couldn't see him being the one behind this. According to the reports, the first abnormal monster sighting had occurred before we'd left Midgar for the Nibelheim mission, long before he'd flown off into the night. Currently, my best guess was AVALANCHE, with or without a side dish of Genesis clones. If a major terrorist attack occurred while Zack and Vincent and I were all off dealing with dragon zombies, king behemoths, and master tonberries, there could end up being hell to pay. 

_Maybe we'll get lucky, and it really is the Planet trying to tell us . . . something. "I hate mako reactors", perhaps._ If so, it was an imprecise way of getting a message across. 

Vincent left as soon as I had arranged transport for him. He'd be leaving from the airfield outside the city, since the distance between here and Wutai was long enough to make a fixed-wing aircraft more practical than one of the small helicopters. Mideel was nearly as far away, but unlike Wutai, it had no local Shinra garrison. If I wanted helpers to keep civilians and random monsters from wandering into the combat area while I fought the dragon zombie, I would need to bring my own. 

And I knew exactly who I wanted to bring. 

I could have sent a text message, but I needed to pick out a couple of other SOLDIERs to come with us, and I might as well select from those my main target felt comfortable around. Which meant a bit of observation. 

Among the less-used functions on my PHS was the one that allowed me to track other SOLDIERs' PHSs with fair accuracy while they were inside any major Shinra installation. It placed Cloud Strife in one of the practice rooms on the 49th floor. Since I hadn't cut open any stairwell doors below the executive levels, I swung myself over a railing and twisted around to drop down one flight rather than risk the elevator again. If that meant the workmen sold a few photos to the Silver Elite, so be it. It wouldn't be the first time. 

I braced myself for the usual round of salutes as I pushed the door open, only to discover that, for once, no one was paying the least attention to me as I entered the big room. There were a dozen men spread out in front of the door, and they were all watching a sparring match. The more visible of the two combatants was . . . Arnulf Lorrah. A Third Class from Mideel, an average fighter who would never make Second. And opposite him, someone too short to be easily seen as more than the tip of a practice sword and a few spikes of chocobo yellow hair. 

I took a few silent steps forward, hoping to get a clearer view before anyone noticed I was here. 

Cloud was on the defensive at the moment, but doing a good job of it. He had his feet under him and was smoothly deflecting and dodging his opponent's attacks without overreacting, which I found was a besetting sin of beginners. 

Suddenly the blond pushed forward and locked his sword against his opponent's, then flashed a side kick at the other man's kneecap. It was an elementary move, taught in Basic Training, but he timed it well. Although Arnulf dodged, the older man was left off-balance, and Cloud dropped under his sword and lunged in with his own fake blade, pushing the blunt tip against Arnulf's stomach. Had it been a real sword, the gut wound would have put Arnulf out of action, although a SOLDIER would have a reasonable chance of surviving it. 

"You win," Arnulf said, with half a smile. "You're getting pretty good, li'l chocobo." 

I had to agree. While Cloud's prowess was limited in absolute terms, the progress he had made in two weeks was nothing short of phenomenal. I wasn't going to congratulate him myself, but I would remember. 

_It looks like I was right in choosing him._ If he kept on improving at this rate, he would make First before he turned twenty, joining a small and select club. And he deserved more of my time and attention than he was currently getting. 

I took one more step forward, making myself more visible, and suddenly everyone was snapping to attention and saluting. "As you were," I said. "Lieutenant Miller, Soldier Lorrah, Soldier Strife. Report to the airstrip in two hours for a mission to Mideel. You three will be support and perimeter control—pack accordingly. You have authorization to draw reasonable amounts from Supply. Assume two to three days in the field. Survival gear shouldn't be necessary." 

Dane Miller was competent and experienced, Arnulf Lorrah was native to the area, and Cloud Strife was talented. A good combination that would hopefully be enough to deal with anything that went wrong at our destination. 

I didn't want to have to have to explain to Zack how I'd gotten his pet chocobo hurt.


	33. Chapter 33

**Cloud**

I'd never been to Mideel before. It was completely different from Nibelheim and might have been really interesting, if my attention hadn't been somewhere else. 

How Sephiroth could stand wearing black leather in such a hot, humid climate, I wasn't sure. I'd been soaked and stinking in just my ordinary uniform by the time we'd gotten to the hotel and its air conditioning, and Dane hadn't been much better. Even Arnulf had wiped his forehead a couple of times. But the General? Not a single drop of sweat on him, as far as I could tell. He seemed completely unruffled as he opened the door to the room we would be sharing. 

_Eep._

I'd been expecting to be thrown in with Dane and Arnulf, leaving Sephiroth to spend tonight in splendid isolation, but apparently, as far as the General was concerned, two double rooms meant that we paired off. And as his protege, I would be the one sharing with him, and not the other officer. 

He probably wanted to talk to me alone. Well, I'd managed before. For ten minutes. Not twelve-ish hours. But I knew he didn't bite, at least. Maybe he wanted to discuss the next step in my training or something, since I'd be getting my next mako shot as soon as we got back to Midgar. And he'd been watching my sparring match with Arnulf, too. 

It wasn't working. I was still nervous. You would have thought we'd have had enough contact by now for it to have worn off, but apparently it hadn't quite yet. I was pretty sure it would have by tomorrow morning, though. Or I'd have run away screaming into the jungle night. 

"Strife. Go take a shower." That aristocratic nose wrinkled slightly, and I realized that if Sephiroth's enhancements were that much better than anyone else's, his sense of smell probably was too, and if I smelled ripe to _me_ . . . 

"Yes, sir." I turned away to hide my flush, and scurried into the bathroom. 

By the time I got out again, Sephiroth had taken his coat off, leaving himself naked above the waist except for his gloves, and was sitting on the bed nearest the window, unwrapping a long red cord from around Masamune's hilt. The sheathed sword lay across his lap, there was an open metal case full of materia beside him, and the battered kit bag he'd carried on and off the airplane was sitting open on the floor, beside his foot. 

"What do you know about dragon zombies, Strife?" 

_Is that what we're going to be fighting? I . . . Ugh. No, I_ do _believe this._ Sephiroth had said we were "support and perimeter control", so he intended to do the fighting himself. We were just along for the ride. And there might not be anyone else anywhere who could take one of those things on solo. 

I licked my lips. "Not much, sir. They're on the 'if you see one of these, run' list we're given in Basic. They're extremely rare. They have a mid-fiftyish score on the Gramilo Monster Rating Scale." According to rumour, General Sephiroth was in the low sixties on the same scale, making him as tough as some of the nastiest unique monsters in the world. 

"At least you're aware that you don't know." Sephiroth's hands kept unwinding the cord from his sword's hilt, slowly revealing the materia slots hidden underneath. "Dragon zombies are normally found in deep mako-fault caverns, and not terribly common even there. Being undead, they are difficult to kill by physically attacking any specific point, and are extremely durable overall. As with most undead, they are damaged by healing magic, although even a FullCure is not sufficient to destroy one in a single casting. They are immune to confusion, minification, frogging, and berserk rage, although surprisingly not to poison, despite the fact that they are poisonous themselves." 

"What about their attacks, sir?" I asked, since he seemed to be waiting for me to say something—maybe checking to see if I really was listening. 

"Unpleasant. In addition to the physical and poison attacks, they have one which inflicts paralysis . . . and access to one of the most powerful magic attacks possessed by any monster. Shadow Flare can instantly kill almost any human. Fortunately, it is a single target spell. With an MBarrier up, I can take two hits from it, and it can be Reflected. Occasionally, a dragon zombie will lash out with an even stronger spell as it dies. That one has never been named, but it is an area attack, and the primary reason I want no one else in range of the fight. An unenhanced individual would be vapourized instantly." 

And a barely-enhanced Cloud Strife probably would be too. I was going to have to make sure I stayed well clear. 

Masamune's hilt was bare now, and I was frankly staring as Sephiroth removed the materia from it. 

"I thought eight materia slots was the theoretical maximum for a single piece of equipment." And then I winced, because I hadn't intended to actually _say_ it. 

"Eight _open_ slots," the General corrected. "Sealed slots, where the materia are permanently seated and cannot be removed, count as half of a normal open slot, because their construction is less complex. The distinction isn't taught in Basic Training, because no one makes anything with sealed slots anymore. You see them only rarely, in older Wutainese equipment." 

"Then Masamune is from Wutai?" I asked as I eyed the huge sword and its _nine_ materia slots again. It seemed awfully ironic to me if it was, that Sephiroth had used it to destroy its own homeland. 

The General's hand ran over the hilt in a caress. "Masamune was hanging on a wall in the Shinra building with a number of other trophy swords when I found her. Before that, who can say? I've never been able to find any records. Given that Vincent found a file on her in the Science Department archives, Hojo may have concealed the information in order to manipulate me in some way. My suspicion is that she's very old. I've only been able to identify the function of one of the sealed-slot materia she bears, and it isn't in any of the catalogues. Other than that, her name is Wutainese, and her construction is consistent with the style of sword known there as a nodachi, but normally they are . . . somewhat shorter." The corner of his mouth lifted as he began to refill the sword's six normal materia slots. It was hard to tell without touching the orbs, but I thought one was a Barrier materia. 

"Strife?" 

"Yes, sir?" 

"Tell me what you make of these." The General reached down, took a materia from the case, and tossed it to me. Then another and a third, without waiting for me to shift my grip or put anything down. I kept the curses inside my head as I juggled. He had to have done it on purpose, but why? Not simple sadism. I'd known officers like that in the infantry, but Sephiroth . . . there was none of that delight in someone else's pain in him. It could have been a test, but of what, and why? Or maybe it _had_ been an accident after all, and he'd just forgotten I wasn't all that heavily enhanced yet. 

_Or maybe I'm just overthinking things._

Finally I got everything sorted out, and was able to examine the first materia more closely, weighing it, rolling it in the palm of my hand, and looking into its depths. "Mastered Fire materia," I said firmly. 

"You're very certain." Sephiroth didn't even bother looking at me as he spoke. Instead, he was re-wrapping Masamune's hilt. I'd bet he didn't change out the materia in his sword very often, given that it seemed to be a twenty-minute process. 

"Tifa's family has one," I explained. "It's actually the first kind of materia I ever touched. Nibelheim was a materia-mining area at one time, so there are still a handful of them scattered around town." 

"And the others?" 

I put the Fire down on the unoccupied bed—mine, I supposed—and considered the second materia he'd thrown at me. "This one's a flaky marble—I mean, a manufactured materia." I winced. 

"Don't worry, Strife. This isn't a public venue. I don't care how you word things, and I'm aware of what the rank and file call those. Continue." 

"Um. It's a fire-plus-condition type, but I've never seen this particular one before." They'd stuck to the lowest-level materia in Basic, and this one was stronger than that. "Dark Firaga?" 

"Close. Hell Firaga." 

"Oh." I put that one down too, and checked out the third. "This is . . . another mastered Fire. It isn't a flaky marble, but it's . . . different somehow." 

"Interesting. That one was manufactured by a new process that Shinra is phasing in. Not many people can sense the difference between those and natural materia. So tell me, Cloud Strife, what is the difference between a flaky marble, as you call them, and a natural materia?" 

"Um," I said again, trying to gather my thoughts. "Flaky marbles are made from fragments of crystallized mako compressed somehow in a machine. They only ever have one spell in them—some are spells not found in any natural materia, like this Hell Firaga. They increase in power instead of adding new spells as they level up, and don't calve new materia when they become mastered. They can blow up if you put too much power into them." So far, I'd just been reciting stuff from Basic. He had to want more than that. "If you concentrate, you can feel that they're . . . all crackly inside. Almost like you could trace the edges of the individual bits of crystal. Natural materia feel smooth. This one, that you said was a new product . . . it isn't crackly, but it's more twisted up inside than the real natural materia." 

"And how were you able to tell those were Fire materia, instead of Ice or Lightning or Earth?" Sephiroth finished the wrappings on Masamune's hilt, and hefted it, probably to test the grip. 

I shook my head. "It's just . . . feel. I can't explain it. I touch them and I _know_." 

A soft snort. "If it's any reassurance, neither can anyone else, beyond saying that the power has a distinct shape that plays on the mind. Not everyone can feel it, and the ability can't be taught. In fact, Zack Fair can't identify an unlabelled materia to save his soul, and uses them by rote. He prefers flaky marbles, in fact, since they're less complicated. You, however, seem to have the makings of a decent mage. Bring those three materia back over here. I'd like to see how many of the rest of these you can identify." 

"I've never even seen a summon materia in real life before, much less touched one," I said as I laid the two Fires and the Hell Firaga beside the metal case holding the other materia. I couldn't resist the opportunity to run my finger over the four red orbs, though. "Earth," I muttered. "Wind. Not elemental. Water . . . it feels odd, though." 

"Tiamat. One of my backbiter materia, as Zack calls them. Untargetable, and attacks everything including the caster. My magic resistance is high enough to make it . . . not entirely useless." 

Oh. Ugh. "I'll make sure I stay well out of range if I ever see you equip it." 

Sephiroth smiled one of his tiny smiles, and gestured at the case again. I ran my finger slowly over the row of magic materia, now wondering whether this was supposed to be a test or a lesson. And whether the General ever wore a shirt, or alternated between his coat and lounging around half-naked all the time. 

All the materia in the case were mastered, except for a couple that seemed to be newly calved. A lot of them were rare. I'd never even _heard_ of a Contain materia before, or of any of the spells that it cast. The only other flaky marble was an Electrocute, and that one I was at least able to identify as "powerful lightning spell". The independent materia were surprisingly bland, all common types. Support . . . he had a lot of Alls. Counter . . . Elemental . . . some kind of absorber, and one more I didn't recognize. Only two command materia (not including the one that occupied a sealed slot on Masamune's hilt), both rare and unfamiliar. 

I was nearly done with my identifications when my PHS beeped. The message showed Dane's ID. _Picking up Wutainese. Should we get anything for you guys?_

_s &s pork + fried rice for me cashew chick + veg stir fry for GS,_ I sent back, remembering what I'd seen Zack bring in when he treated the office to lunch, and wondering why other SOLDIERs always seemed to text in complete sentences. 

_OK, back in 15._ Well, maybe not that time. 

"So you can tell one materia from the other," the General said, when I was done fiddling with the communications device. "How good are you at casting?" 

"Average, I guess? I mean, I finished that segment in Basic without any trouble. When I cast, I hit the creature I'm expecting to hit, and do what I'm told is a normal amount of damage. It isn't something I've been working on lately, though. I thought I should try to improve my swordsmanship first. Sir." Oops, I'd been forgetting to use that word as much as I should. I was losing the whole military protocol thing they'd pounded into me in Basic. SOLDIER seemed to be a lot looser about that, though. 

"I have an exercise for you, then." 

"Yes, sir." 

Sephiroth bent over and pulled two apples out of the kit bag at his feet, and tossed them both to me in rapid succession, once more forcing me to catch one in each hand. "You have an Ice materia, I believe. Place those roughly an arm's length apart and try to freeze only the one on the left. Without destroying it completely. When you can do that, reduce the distance between them and see if you can do it again. If you can get that distance down to less than a foot, I will accept the exercise as completed." 

Oh. It was pretty obvious what this was for: fine control of location _and_ casting strength. And probably to improve my concentration in general, just by casting over and over again. "How close can you get them, sir?" 

"About an inch. Closer if I cheat and cast off-center. Genesis could do it with them touching, if he had a few seconds to concentrate." 

"I understand. I won't disappoint you." 

That shadow of a smile flickered across his face again. "See that you don't, Strife." 

After that, things relaxed a bit. Once the food got there, I ate fried rice awkwardly with a plastic fork and watched Sephiroth work his chicken over with cheap wooden chopsticks as he read something on the tiny screen of his PHS. After supper, I cleaned my sword and went to bed early. 

When I woke up in the middle of the night, Sephiroth was curled up on top of the covers of the other bed. He'd taken off his boots (but not his gloves), and was hugging a scabbarded Masamune in his sleep, treating it like some kind of long, sharp teddy bear. There was a faint glow visible through his eyelids. That was a bit freaky. 

The Silver Elite would have paid me a lot of reward points for a picture, I was sure, but I wasn't even tempted. The way he was wrapped around that sword was both scary and weirdly vulnerable. Another reminder that I knew a lot more about the Silver General than a sixteen-year-old ex-trooper should. So I just shuffled to the bathroom and back, as I'd been intending to do in the first place. 

I woke again as the light in the room came on, swallowing back a curse. Six in the morning, same hour as we'd always woken in Basic. I should have known that the General would be a morning person, and either he'd put his boots and coat on in the dark out of habit, or he'd already been up for a while. 

"Fifteen minutes," he told me, and went over to stand by the window. 

Yup, just as bad as Basic. I scrambled into the bathroom and back again, then into my clothes, settling my sword at my back right on the time limit and following the General out the door. Dane and Arnulf were just coming out of their own room, fully dressed and ready for action. 

"Do we get breakfast, sir?" I asked. 

We did, as it turned out. At the hotel restaurant. Which was nearly empty at this hour of the morning, but everyone who _was_ there was staring at us. Sephiroth was famous even in Mideel, I guess. He seemed to take the stares in stride, but I could see the slight frown as he sipped his coffee, and I didn't think it was because he was worried about the fight that was coming up. 

The food was ordinary, and we all ate quickly. I had to force most of mine down, into a queasy stomach. _You're not supposed to get motion sick sitting in a_ chair _,_ I told it, but it didn't seem to be listening. Ugh. 

And then the General was dumping a handful of gil on the table, and we all followed him out of the hotel into the already hot and humid air of the rain forest. 

"The dragon zombie is squatting at a beach resort area a short distance up the coast. We'll have to walk, since I have no intention of purchasing a vehicle outright for this, and no one is likely to rent to us once they realize where we're going. The resort itself has been evacuated, but I would be unsurprised to see some group of idiot journalists turn up. Your job is to secure the perimeter once we reach the resort. If a civilian wanders into range of this battle, there won't be enough left afterwards to fill a sandwich bag, and that would be extremely bad publicity." Sephiroth's mako green eyes raked over us. Then he turned and began to walk. 

We followed him down a narrow trail through the trees. He accelerated to a jog once we were out of sight of the town. I had no idea how he knew where he was going, but then I had to put all my effort into just keeping up. _As bad as Basic,_ I thought again, pounding along in the middle of the group. 

I think it was about five miles. Less than half an hour at the pace Sephiroth was setting, and I would bet everyone but me could have gotten there even faster if they'd wanted to. Then the path suddenly opened out into the back of a tennis court, which was as good of a "we're here" as I could have wished for. 

It wasn't exactly difficult to spot the dragon zombie, either. It was curled up on its side in the yard at the back of the resort hotel, just beyond the tennis court. It looked like it was asleep, but, well, _do_ undead monsters sleep? I'd never really understood how that whole undead thing worked to begin with. Something to ask about when we weren't in the middle of trying to kill one, I guess. 

"Arnulf, go around to the front and keep an eye on the driveway. Dane, go with him and check the main hotel for signs that anyone's been here since the evacuation. Message when you're done." 

"Yessir." 

"Strife, work your way to the right along the edge of the cleared area. There are other paths through here. Make certain they're not in use right now. Don't go any further than the swimming pool over there, and return here when you're done." 

"Yes, sir." 

Sephiroth himself was already headed left along the jungle's edge. Of all of us, he was going to end up getting the closest to the disturbingly large monster. He probably figured that was just his job, though. 

One day, I'd be strong enough that I'd be able to make it _my_ job, too. Even if getting that strong meant turning blue-grey-green from swallowing a whole bunch of Jenova-laced mako. 

I found three other paths—two of them were proper walking trails, with signage and everything, that had probably been created by the resort, and the third was another narrow gap in the trees like the one we'd come in by. I didn't think any of them had been disturbed recently. Really, I was pretty sure Sephiroth had never expected to find anything back here. He was just being thorough. 

He was already waiting for me when I circled back towards the trail we'd entered from, tapping out a message on his PHS. He finished just as I arrived, and pocketed it. 

"Strife. Your job is to watch this area. If you see anything moving that isn't the target or one of us, drop them with a Sleepel, and we'll worry about who they are and why they're here later." He didn't wait for a reply, just drew Masamune and went running up the pathway next to the tennis court, straight at the dragon zombie. Swift, but surprisingly quiet. The monster didn't seem to notice him until Masamune was on a firm trajectory for its nose. Then it reared back with a roar that somehow sounded _sticky_. 

Sephiroth jumped backward too, and cast a spell that made a curved green barrier flash in front of him—Reflect. Right, protection against that Shadow Flare spell he'd mentioned while he'd been speaking in short lectures last night. 

The dragon zombie was nothing less than the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Worse than whole eaters, even, and I'd always thought those were really nasty. The dragon zombie was made of pink-grey rotting flesh and naked bone held together by stiffened ligaments, and even from nearly a hundred feet away, it _stank_. Worse now that it was moving and shedding trickles of fluid—I think it had crusted over before while it was pretending to sleep. 

I bet that if I'd been close enough for a good look at Sephiroth's expression, his nose would have been as wrinkled as the terrain outside Nibelheim, but he was still dancing around slashing at the thing, and ignoring it when it breathed a cloud of greenish vapour in his face. It took less than a minute for Masamune to find and shear through a bare knee joint, making the monster collapse on its front on the ground. 

Everything went suddenly, eerily black-and-white, as though the colour had leached out of the world, and there was an explosion, a flash of green, and another explosion as the spell reflected back into the dragon zombie's face. It roared again, or tried to—as everything went back to normal, I could see that there were so many holes in its torso that forcing air out of the remains of its lungs didn't send much of it up its windpipe anymore. It was down to more bone than flesh, and I was sure that another swipe of Masamune would finish it. Then— 

« ** _NO!!!_** »

The single word was carried on a wave of pain that took the strength out of my knees and dumped me on my back on the ground. Someone yelled from farther over towards the hotel, and Sephiroth made an indescribable, agonized sound, flinging his head back and shaking it violently. Whatever this was, it had hit him harder than the rest of us, and the dragon zombie's foreleg was suddenly headed in his direction. 

Dizzy, not thinking clearly, I did the only useful thing I could come up with, which was to cast a Cure at the General. 

Which, of course, bounced off the Reflect spell and hit the dragon zombie on the nose, making it shake its head in pain. 

The split second free of attack was enough time for Sephiroth to recover, and Masamune rose and fell one last time. I relaxed enough as the monster fell over to realize that the patch of ferns I'd inadvertently landed in was wet. Ugh. I scrambled to my feet again and tried to dust myself off. Then the General was looking at me and gesturing me toward him, so I took off at a slow jog past the tennis court. As I got closer, I realized his eyebrows were drawn in, forming a single fine line above the bridge of his nose. Worried? Or still in pain from that weird sourceless yelling? Or mad at me for interfering in his fight? 

He must have picked up on my nervousness, because he said, "I commend your quick intervention, Strife. Even if your action perhaps failed to have the result you intended, it was . . . useful." 

"Thank you, sir. What _was_ that?" _It felt like someone tore my chest open and was trying to pull my lungs out . . ._ No. I might have said that to Zack, but not to the General. 

"Trouble," said Sephiroth grimly. "Or at least I can't imagine an explanation I'd find pleasant for Rufus Shinra being able to dump any kind of communication into the channel that Jenova was using before we destroyed her." 

I blinked. He was right, I realized. That had been Rufus Shinra's voice, or at least someone who sounded a lot like he did when he was on TV. Except that he didn't normally scream on TV . . . _I think I'm still a little scrambled. Or something._

I couldn't see any way we could find out what had happened, since Rufus Shinra had vanished with Tentacle-Hojo. 

Which meant that this was probably Hojo's fault. 

_Oh, shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, Cloud and Sephiroth have a discussion about game mechanics, and then Cloud saves the day by accident. ;)
> 
> (Also, it looks like I initially posted this without fixing a broken conversion from a double-greater-than to a guillemet, that in turn broke some formatting. Sorry about that.)


	34. Chapter 34

**Vincent**

Wutai was different from what I remembered. Some of the changes were overt, like the missing landmark buildings that were visible even from the air. Others were subtle. There was a hint of something in the atmosphere that I could only describe as "defeat". This was a nation still bleeding from the wounds the recent war had left behind. 

When I got down out of the small plane at the airstrip outside the base, there was a local worker busy fiddling with one of the runway lights. She looked at me as I passed by, and deliberately spat on the ground. To her, anyone in a SOLDIER uniform was the enemy, a monster occupying her nation. 

The escort waiting for me inside the shelter built at the edge of the taxiway consisted of a single SOLDIER Second Class, who gave me a look that wasn't much less disgusted than that of the local outside. 

"Captain Michael Brooks, SOLDIER Second Class," he introduced himself, apparently not caring that I had everything, including his name, from the files I'd read. Cloud had showed me how to access that kind of information on my PHS, and I'd spent some time learning about the Wutai garrison while I'd been in transit. 

"Vincent Valentine." I gave him that minimalist introduction without saluting—SOLDIER Firsts were considered a law unto themselves, so that was acceptable for the role I was currently playing. The question of how much of it _was_ a role . . . wasn't something I needed to think about right now. 

Brooks was scowling. "When I asked for someone to help with our problem, I was expecting the General, not _you_." 

"Sephiroth wants this handled subtly. If he came to Wutai, every eye here would be on him." 

"And you think no one's going to be watching you." 

I shrugged. I _could_ vanish in Wutai, if I really needed to. I'd done it before. The only catch was that I'd have to do something about my eyes if I had to pull that this time, but I'd come prepared. 

"The information you sent to Midgar didn't give us much to go on," I said, instead of making the reply he wanted. 

Brooks' scowl deepened. "That's because we don't _have_ much to go on. And I've got one man dead and another in a coma without any sign that he's going to wake up. Meanwhile, the locals are all talking about giant black birds, and we keep coming across piles of feathers." 

Which was little different from what had been on the single sheet of mission information Sephiroth had handed me in his office. 

"I thought thunderbirds weren't uncommon around here." They hadn't been thirty years ago, anyway. 

"Does this look like a thunderbird feather to you?" Brooks pulled the feather from his belt all but forced it into my hand. 

I held it up for a better look. Thunderbirds _were_ black, and had a wingspan longer than my arms, but this feather was too big for one of theirs, and splashed with grey in a way that made it look oddly fragile. The parts that were still black had a slight red sheen to them as I angled the feather to catch the light. Thunderbird feathers did have some iridescence, but it was always gold-green. And the vane was metal-hard with a razor-sharp tip, which wasn't an attribute of any bird I was familiar with. 

"No," I admitted, and Brooks relaxed by a hair. I suppose he'd thought I was going to be difficult about accepting his deductions just for the sake of being difficult. Perhaps Genesis Rhapsodos had been like that—Brooks was one of the few SOLDIERs serving under Rhapsodos who hadn't deserted along with him. As for myself, I preferred to weigh evidence rationally in cases like these. "I take it that no one has actually _seen_ whatever is shedding these." 

"Not who's come out alive and regained consciousness to report in. If the locals know anything, they aren't telling us about it." The Second Class's expression said that he knew as well as I did just how surprising that wasn't. The Wutainese would probably rather be slaughtered to the last man right now than give information to Shinra, which meant that I might end up needing the things I'd had Reno and Tseng prepare for me after all. 

I weighed the feather thoughtfully across one finger. It was unbalanced, the vane much heavier than it should have been and throwing everything off. "Where have the ambushes been taking place?" That was what it had said in the one-page briefing: ambushes by monsters that had taken out a pair of Third Classes without them being able to radio in (thus the request for a First Class, since anything that could do that was beyond the ability of a lone Second), and killed several locals. Personally, I wasn't sure that the report hadn't been jumping to conclusions by stating this was the fault of monsters. The feather I held was certainly capable of acting as an antipersonnel weapon in the hands of some of the Wutainese ninja I had known. 

"How well do you know the area?" Brooks was giving me a dubious look, but at least he wasn't scowling anymore. 

"The last time I was here was before the war." 

"Where _did_ you spend the war, if you weren't on the lines?" 

"At a lab. Someone had to guard the Science Department's secret projects." Two statements that were both completely true and completely unrelated, but he'd put them together in the way I intended, I was sure. The notes on Brooks' file said he wasn't known for his subtlety. 

"Well, you at least know there's a long chunk of mountain-y nothing pointing north into the ocean beyond the city, right? That's where all the killings have been taking place." 

Or at least the ones he knew about. Inwardly, I sighed. I had a feeling it was going to turn out to be a very good thing that Sephiroth hadn't tried to give this mission to Zack. The young First wouldn't have had the first idea how to go about gathering information. 

"The bodies?" I asked, and took a step towards the door marked _Exit_. 

"We've been holding Andy's until we can ship it back, but you should already have gotten the autopsy report, right? The locals', we had to let their families take. Most of them, we didn't even get a look at." Brooks fell in beside me. 

"Would it be possible to speak to whoever did the autopsy? I'd like to confirm something." While I was certainly capable of drawing my own conclusions from an examination of a dead body, a medical doctor would be more highly trained in that than a mere Turk, and more likely to be up on newer forensic testing methods. 

Which was how I found myself in a small, antiseptic-smelling room facing down a middle-aged woman in a lab coat who didn't seem at all impressed to be sharing her space with a First Class. Fortunately, I didn't care if she hated me, so long as she answered my questions. Quickly, by preference, since the smell reminded uncomfortably of the period when I'd been under Hojo's thumb in Nibelheim. 

"This is Dr. Cassandra, our base medical officer. Cass, this is Soldier Valentine. He's been sent by Headquarters to look into our problem. He has some questions for you." 

"Oh?" Cassandra raised her chin. Still unimpressed, and expecting me to try to cajole her into civility through small talk. Instead, I opted to disconcert her a bit by ignoring the social discourse, which I'd never been any good at anyway. 

"Captain Brooks says that you had a chance to examine some of the civilian bodies." 

"That's right." Not intimidated, good. I _could_ force information out of someone who was babbling with fear, but in my experience, it took more time than it was worth to get what you were after. 

"Were they all killed by these?" I held up the feather. 

"Oh, yes. Does the phrase 'quilled like a boundfat' mean anything to you? Because they were—all the ones that I've seen, at least." 

"And there was no sign that any human agency had been involved with the deaths?" 

The doctor tilted her head to one side. "That . . . is an interesting question. Some of the feathers went through bone, and I can only think of three ways they could have been driven with enough force to do that. Magic, a Limit Break, or some sort of mechanism—biological or otherwise—that gripped the feather just above the base and drove it in. Pushing them from higher up would have crumpled them, and all the specimens I've examined have been pristine. It could have been a human. It could also have been a monster. There isn't enough information for me to be certain." 

_A Limit Break._ I hadn't even considered that as a possibility. Interesting. 

"That's all I wanted to know," I told her. _Or at least all you can tell me for now._

It was becoming clear that no one knew exactly what it was that I was supposed to be chasing. And that if I went out into the northern mountains with only the information I currently had, I was likely to end up with a feather coat myself. 

Which meant that I was going to need to do this the hard way. 

Half an hour later, a down-at-the-heels Wutainese labourer trudged out of the Shinra base after having finished delivering a basket of fresh vegetables for tonight's supper in the officer's mess. 

Or at least, that was what everyone was supposed to think. I was wearing a traditional knee-length grey-blue tunic (patched neatly at the shoulder), sandals, and a loincloth. My hair was braided down my back, and contacts hid my mako eyes—although there might be some problems with leakage in dim lighting, I'd been warned. Cerberus was strapped to my bare thigh underneath my clothes, and my left hand, with its evidence of Hojo's surgical work, was uncomfortably doubled up inside my sleeve, since I couldn't wear gloves with these clothes. I'd always been too light-skinned to pass for a pure-blooded Wutainese, but mixed-bloods had never been all that rare. 

I kept my gaze on the ground as I walked into town, adjusting my body language to look appropriately downtrodden. I hadn't dressed like this in a very long time, but the people I passed seemed to be buying it, letting their eyes ghost over me without stopping for a longer look. Even my apparently missing hand didn't draw notice, since about a quarter of the men between ages fifteen and fifty that I passed suffered from similar afflictions. 

I found a shabby tea shop appropriate for my current persona, took a seat, and let the southern Wutainese accent I'd picked up from the grandmother who had initially taught me the language show through as I ordered the cheapest beverage they had. No one expected a Shinra agent to sound like a peasant who'd grown up wading in rice paddies—another thing that had stood me in good stead here in the past. These days, I probably sounded a bit old-fashioned as well, but rural areas often were. 

Then I sipped slowly at my tea and listened for interesting conversations. The deaths were recent, they were news, and _someone_ was certain to be talking about them. 

I wasn't disappointed. 

" . . . Suzuki isn't all that bright, you know that. He mistook Lord Godo for a tengu, for crying out loud!" 

"Yeah, but he swears he saw a monster in red standing over one of the bodies." 

"Sure he did. Monster in red, my ass. He was probably drinking that paint thinner again." 

"He isn't bright enough to come up with a description like, 'exactly like the Red Scourge, but with no face' on his own." 

"So he copied it from one of those cheap pamphlets his friends pass around! If it was anything like the Red Scourge, it would have killed him good and dead. That man was nasty even by Shinra standards." 

I continued drinking tea. "The Red Scourge" was the Wutainese name for Colonel Genesis Rhapsodos, one of the three men who had commanded SOLDIER during the Wutai War. Publicly, Shinra put out that he was dead, but the file the Turks held on him indicated that he was ill but still alive, along with some other interesting tidbits such as a shoot-on-sight order and the fact that he could duplicate his genes into other humans, turning them into copies of himself. 

So. Colonel Rhapsodos, but "with no face". I wasn't sure what to make of that. A faulty duplicate? "Standing over one of the bodies" seemed fairly definite, though. 

Eventually I ran out of tea, and rose to leave the teahouse. Outside, the sun was hovering on the horizon and turning everything the colour of my old thermal cape. I wandered through the main market, once more keeping an ear open for gossip, and bought a meat-and-vegetable kebab of uncertain origin at a roadside stall. The signage didn't indicate what kind of meat it was, but it tasted slightly off. Hopefully the mako Hojo had forced on me would help with any food poisoning I caught from that first bite. In '73, a similar purchase had left me unable to go more than ten feet from a toilet for a _week_ no matter how many Heals I cast. 

«Why take the risk of eating something like that at all?» 

"Because it gives me an obvious reason to be loitering here," I muttered under my breath. _Shut up, Chaos._

This section of street where I'd picked up the inedible food had been one of the busiest in the city in the old days, and it was still fairly well-populated. Snatches of discussion slipped past as I pretended to nibble on the vegetables. A few were even pertinent. Such as the one that confirmed the creature, whatever it was, had never attacked anyone at night, and another that gave me a location for an attack Brooks' report hadn't had much detail on. 

«Why not find this Suzuki person and ask him what he saw?» Chaos was clearly bored. 

"'Suzuki' is one of the most common names in Wutai. There's no way I could find him without finding the people from the teahouse first, and I'm not even certain which group I was listening to." If I really _needed_ to find that particular Suzuki, I could probably manage if I put enough effort into it, but it seemed a bit premature to me. 

«Are you enjoying this, host-of-mine?» 

"It used to be part of my job. Now shut up." 

If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn Chaos was sulking. I ignored it. Right now, I had a decision to make: hunt the monster in the dark, or wait until morning? The dark would conceal a lot of things. Including, if necessary, Chaos. But the creature might not come out at night. I had a general idea of where to look for it, but that wasn't going to be sufficient to track it to its lair. Wherever that might be. 

No, better to spend tonight with a map, and do some planning. Tomorrow morning would be soon enough to chase this thing down, since the likelihood it would kill anyone else in the meanwhile was low. 

It was dark by the time I got back to the base, and I'd taken out my contacts, because the tint reduced my night vision to pre-mako levels. I hid in a shadow and timed the guards' rounds for a bit before jumping the wall. No one saw me, and I strolled briskly around to the building at the back where the Officers' Quarters were located. Technically I should have been housed in the barracks with the other unranked SOLDIERs, but . . . First Class. 

My gut rumbled as I changed from my Wutainese labourer's garb to my almost-uniform, and I wondered if whatever kitchen they had here was still open and I could wrangle some food from it. Upon reflection, they most likely wouldn't do anything even if I broke in and helped myself. First Class, again. Shinra's best were permitted such small vagaries. 

Fortunately for the kitchen staff, what passed for the officers' club was still serving. I half-hid at the rear of the room and ate while trying to use the map function of my PHS and wishing for a proper map, a nice piece of space-covering paper that would let me see more than a small area at a time, and that I could stick pins into. Some technological advances were not improvements, in my opinion. But I did manage to narrow down the area in which to search. 

The next morning found me ghosting through the mountains, leaping from crag to crag. It felt . . . odd, but at the same time rather exhilarating, to have the strength and the speed to treat these natural surroundings as I'd been trained to do with urban ones. Cities were made to a human scale, while nature made no such concessions, and being able to reliably jump a thirty-foot distance made a vast difference in mobility out here. 

I was nearly at my target area when I sensed the presence of another human being. Silently, I dropped into the shadow of a boulder and waited, not knowing if I'd just found my target, some other hunter, or a foolish innocent wandering into range. 

And then the person I'd sensed wandered up the path, and my entire brain stuttered to a halt, because it was . . . a little girl. Nine or ten years old, perhaps, and dressed in the trappings of a Wutai ninja, although the weapons she carried were no more than blunted toys. She'd had some training, because she was trying to hide her aura, but only doing so well enough to remain undetected against the rankest amateur. It was clear that she hadn't sensed me at all, because she marched straight on past the boulder behind which I was hiding without so much as a sidelong glance. She then paused at a fork in the narrow game trail she'd been following, crouching to examine the ground before she nodded firmly and took the branch to the left. 

Well, now, what was I supposed to do with this? A softer man would have bundled her up and taken her back to town, I expect, but I had a feeling that she might be more useful as a stalking-horse. And besides, she would probably fight me and cause a massive disruption that would send my quarry into hiding and prevent me from getting anything more done today. She looked like the type. 

I wasn't going to let her get feathered if I could help it, of course. I'm not hardened enough to just _let_ something like that happen right under my nose, and I don't think I would want to associate with anyone who was. So I settled in to follow her as she picked her way along the game trails. She was headed in about the right direction, anyway. 

It was at the third split in the trail that she stopped, scowled, and put her hands on her hips. 

"Stinky guy—which way did you go?" she asked the world in general, in Wutainese. "And why can't you leave proper tracks?! The Treasure Princess is going to find you sooner or later, and when she does, she won't be pleased that you wasted so much of her time!" 

_Why would someone who knows they might be followed leave_ any _kind of tracks?_ But of course, she was too young for that kind of logic. 

She sighed and scuffed the ground with one foot. "Okay, I went left last time, so right this time, I guess." And ran off in that direction. Personally, I would have been happier if she'd taken the left path, which had more cover and would have made my pursuit easier, but my luck seldom operates that way. 

The girl trotted down into a valley and waded an ankle-deep stream, and something prickled along my nerves. The faintest of faint sounds. An edge of killing intent that made me pull Cerberus from his holster and thumb the safety off. I scanned the mess of boulders and brush and rippled rock walls, searching for the enemy. 

When the attack came, it was from above, and I felt like an idiot. _Feathers. Wings. The Genesis clones were supposed to have a limited ability to fly._ I'd been thinking of this as a human adversary, which was a big mistake, because there was nothing human about this creature beyond a loose similarity in proportions. 

The assertion that it had no face was correct, although I didn't know how Suzuki, whoever he was, had recognized this thing as being otherwise similar to Genesis Rhapsodos. It was rotting, or perhaps diseased. Any hint of normal skin or hair had vanished under a mass of pinkish boils. There were eyes in the mess, but they were a pupilless, glazed grey-white in colour, and quite possibly blind. The records on the Genesis clones hadn't indicated the existence of anything like _this_. The only part of it with a normal surface was the single wing protruding from its back, with its layer of dark feathers. 

That wing was drawing back, and I didn't like the look of it, so I cast Wall at the girl as I leveled Cerberus. The first shot plowed into the base of that wing, and the appendage sagged as bone shattered. I aimed the second at its head, but it dodged and countered with a fireball, and I had to do a little dodging of my own. That gave it time to get two steps closer. Soon, it would manage to close, and I really didn't want to fight it hand-to-hand with a civilian present. The chances of Chaos getting loose were too high. But if I tried to open up the distance, and it didn't follow me . . . 

"How _dare_ you ignore me?!" 

Someone had definitely been training her. The chokehold she had on the disintegrating maybe-clone could have come from a martial-arts textbook. Although it might have been more useful if the thing had actually been breathing. And if the creature hadn't been holding what looked like a nail-studded baseball bat. A far cry from the elegant sword the real Genesis Rhapsodos was known to carry, but it would still make quick work of the underaged ninja if it managed to hit her. And it wasn't exactly easy to shoot it without risking hitting her if she dodged in the wrong direction. I needed something to give me an edge, and I didn't have time to think. 

Time . . . 

I slapped the materia of that name into one of the open slots on Cerberus, and cast Haste on myself and Slow on the thing in front of me, not worrying about splatter hitting the child-ninja. Unless the creature was immune to Slow, she would be no worse off. I leaned to the side as the world seemed to thicken around me, air resistance clutching at my body. There! That was a better angle, one that couldn't possibly hit the girl. My finger closed on the trigger, and Cerberus barked again, shattering the thing's right shoulder and blowing its arm off. I raced forward, closing the last few steps so that I could jam the gun into the thing's ear and blow its brains out without risking harm to the aspiring ninja. She did get a bit splattered, but it served her right for going on the attack in the first place. 

As time returned to its normal course and the air began to thin out again, I bent down and plucked a feather from the creature's wing, comparing it with the one Brooks had given me. It looked to me like they matched. That didn't mean that this was the only killer, of course, but if any others that might exist were falling apart at the same rate as this one, they should be past being a threat in a week or so. 

I should probably bury it, or send someone up here to do it. The body wasn't vanishing into sparkles, which was further proof this had been human once. 

"Who are you?" the ninja girl asked, giving me a suspicious glare as she picked herself up and dusted herself off. 

"Does it matter?" I deliberately gave my Wutainese a foreign accent, twisting the sounds slightly to make it seem as though I had learned it from a book. 

She jumped backwards. "You're one of those Shinra guys! Come on! Fight me!" 

Instead, I broke Cerberus open and began to reload, ignoring her except when I had to tilt my head to one side to avoid a slightly-too-accurate throw of a blunt shuriken. 

"What do you think would happen if you managed to kill me?" I asked as I snapped the gun shut again and returned it to its holster. 

"What are you, stupid or something? You'd be _dead_ , of course!" 

She couldn't be that much of an idiot . . . could she? "And after Shinra found out I was dead?" 

"They'd think you'd gotten killed by the monster." She pointed at it. 

"And they'd send someone else after it. Probably General Sephiroth. I don't think you want him here." 

Her eyes widened. "The Silver Demon . . . No, they wouldn't. They _couldn't_. Could they?" 

"He's in Mideel right now. If I drop out of contact, he'd probably stop by Wutai on his way back to Midgar, just to clean things up." Even if it was a considerable distance out of his way. However, I doubted the girl would care much about geography. 

"But that's . . . That isn't _fair_!" She even stomped her foot to emphasize that. 

I shrugged. "Life isn't fair. Incidentally, I doubt you're supposed to be out here alone." Ninja, especially ninja trained from childhood, always came from high-ranking families in Wutai. No such child would ever have been allowed to wander off with nothing more to protect herself than a blunt boomerang-shuriken. 

She took a step back and raised her weapon defensively. "W-what are you going to do?" 

I lunged forward, and while she tried to escape, an unenhanced child had no chance of getting away from me. I was _not_ going to leave her out here alone, when there might be more rogue clones wandering around, and she had no possible way of defending herself. I slung her over my shoulder and ignored her beating at my back and shouting progressively less polite versions of "Let me go!" and "Shinra devil!" as I headed back toward town at speed, although I couldn't jump nearly as far as before while carrying a squirming, unbalanced weight. 

I did wish she would stop sticking the blunt points of the shuriken into my skin, though. They were causing a dull ache, especially when they hit my scars. 

Then she bit me. 

Given that she'd been manageable enough up to that point, I wasn't expecting it, and the surprise made me miss my footing. I tumbled down hard into a ravine, my shoulder slamming against stone. The girl tried to wriggle away, but I grabbed her by the ankle and prevented it. 

I was starting to get a little annoyed at the ridiculous brat as my feet groped for purchase, my sabatons scraping moss from the rock. 

"If you don't quit struggling, I'll drop you," I said. "Head first." 

She froze in my grip, and I finally had a chance to steady myself and look around properly. 

This . . . wasn't a ravine. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, it was a ravine _now_ , but had been something else once. The moss-covered surface under my left hand was smooth and engraved with a disquieting image of a female figure. She held a sword not unlike Sephiroth's Masamune, longer than she was tall, and her image had been captured as she swung it aggressively, long hair whipping around her. She was nude, I though, although the relief was so old that many of the details had been worn away. And from her back, three pairs of wings sprouted. 

There was also a border made up of geometric patterns and . . . letters? Yes, those were Old Wutainese characters. I ran my fingers over them, doing my best to memorize them, because my grasp of even the modern written language was shaky. I was going to have to look them up later on, when I wasn't hauling around a pint-sized ninja. Who was wriggling again. 

"Ji-e-no-ba," said a voice near my ear. The girl, I discovered, had now hauled herself upright, and was sitting on my shoulder. 

"What?" 

"That's how it's read—'ji-e-no-ba'. Like in one of the really old books. But I guess a stinky Shinra guy like you wouldn't know that." 

_Ji-e-no-ba._ But when you modified it according to the way foreign words were handled in Wutainese . . . _Jenova?_

My blood ran cold, and I could feel Chaos stirring in its sleep. That had to be wrong. And if not . . . what in hell did it mean? 

"I think that's an eidolon," the girl added helpfully. "You know, one of those boring old god-pictures. One of Leviathan might actually be a _treasure_ , but I've never heard of Jienoba before." 

I pulled out my PHS and awkwardly used it to take a few pictures. Or at least, I hoped that was what I was doing, but the girl didn't say anything, so maybe I was getting it right. Then I leaped out of the ravine and once more turned toward town, with the girl sitting on my shoulder. She seemed a little less disagreeable now. 

" _Yuffie! Yuffie-sama!_ " 

The girl began to wriggle again as she heard the voices. "Let me down, you Shinra creep! They're going to find me!" 

"Sounds like a good idea to me." 

"You—you— _Shinra_!" Apparently, that was the worst expletive in her vocabulary. It would have been funny, if I hadn't known it was most likely deserved. " _Masato! Sachiko! Help, he's trying to kidnap me!_ " 

A little too sharp for her own good, as well as educated. I sighed and set her down on her feet, keeping a firm grip on her shoulder so that she couldn't run. If I didn't, she would most likely slip away. 

Two ninja, a man and a woman, appeared suddenly from among the mess of rocks and brush surrounding us. I was unsurprised, since I'd sensed them homing in on us while I was manhandling the girl. Now that there were witnesses present, I let her go, ignoring the evil glare the male ninja was giving me. 

The woman, who had a scar down the side of her face, seemed more practical, or perhaps she just knew the girl better. "You mustn't run off like that, Yuffie-sama! You know it isn't safe." And she grabbed the girl's collar as soon as she was in range. Then she turned to me and bowed. "Thank you for returning our princess, SOLDIER-sama." 

So the child was of the Kisaragi lineage. That explained why she was being trained . . . and why she was so overconfident. 

"I was only doing my job," I told her, speaking my intentionally-foreign-sounding Wutainese even though she'd addressed me in the common language. "However, that she was willing to attempt to hunt a deadly monster with a practice weapon does not speak well of her teachers." 

"As you say." The woman—Sachiko?—was still bent at a ninety-degree angle, and still had a hand on Yuffie's collar. 

"I've killed one creature, but there may be others. They appear to be dying, but to be safe, I would suggest that no one venture into that area for the next ten days or so." 

"I will inform Lord Godo." As I had expected, this woman was close enough to the Kisaragi family to spare me the trouble of going through diplomatic channels. 

I had nothing further to tell them, so I turned and left. Even a ninja wouldn't be able to follow me for long. 

«And you relish that, don't you? Perhaps you're learning. A little.» 

"If you're going to babble, at least make it about something useful," I muttered. "You know why that thing was falling apart." Actually, I wasn't sure that it knew, but I still didn't make a question of it. 

Chaos laughed. «You give me too much credit, host-mine. I was never on that side, you know. Jenova, Shenlong, Susano-o . . . they went their own way. I wasn't even invited.» 

I filed away the names, wondering at the same time whether they were real or just something Chaos had made up to mess with my head again. It seemed to be the damnable creature's only passtime. 

"You're enjoying this." 

«I was never incarnate before you, save once. I _do_ enjoy perceiving the world in this way. Although more than twenty years staring at the inside of a coffin lid was certainly not what I had in mind.» 

Was it constantly being cryptic as revenge for so many years of being bored out of its mind? I pushed the thought away as unproductive. 

Melting Genesis clones. Jenova having allies. _Sides._

No doubt Chaos was also enjoying telling me just enough to tease and not enough for me to have any real answers. A shame we were trapped in the same body. I could think of some interrogation techniques I would really have liked to practice on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, Vincent gets to do something Turk-like for a change, and Yuffie is . . . Yuffie. ;)


	35. Chapter 35

**???**

" _The arrow has left the bow of the goddess._ " 

"If you do not stop quoting that pathetic third-rate poem, I'll sedate you." 

Laughter. The other man, the one who had cut his way into this room . . . long ago? How long? Days, weeks . . . _what's a day?_

I could hold onto my thoughts a little longer now, but they still tended to float away into the green. The hateful, hateful green. 

The man who had cut his way into the room however long ago, and then fallen on the floor as though too weak to continue, stopped laughing and ran a hand through his hair. "Ah, Doctor, it scarcely matters. Perhaps it would end my pain, at least for a time. Surely you can have at least that much mercy on another man's unsalvageable failed product, if you can't be bothered to take me out back and shoot me?" 

"We have limited supplies. I'm not about to waste a bullet. Go fall on your sword, if dying appeals to you." 

"I thought you were anticipating the arrival of more supplies than you would know what to do with." The man with the sword waved his hand at the machine lump in the middle of the room, the one the doctor had worked over for a long, long time. It had lights on it now, green ones. When they had first come on, I had heard something scream, faint and far away and terrifying. 

"They're unlikely to have any bullets," the doctor said, with a sniff. 

"And might not give you any if they did. Face it, Hojo, you have no more idea of what you're playing with than I do." 

_Hojo._ Greasy and stooped and carrying a clipboard in his hands—yes. Yes! That was his name, spread through a hundred splintered shards of memory. I remembered _two_ names now, Hojo and Tseng. 

I wondered what my name was. 

"You don't know because you didn't _listen_. Proving you are a defective product." 

The man with the sword laughed again. "Sephiroth obviously didn't listen to that creature of yours either. So who's the defective product now, Doctor?" 

_Sephiroth._ Green, green eyes. Poison green. Mako green. _Hated_ green. My father— _father? Blond mustache. Smell of cigars._ —had always been more interested in that test-tube monster's progress than he was in me. He forgot my birthday, but always remembered the _thing_ 's. Never knew how I had done in school, but spent hours poring over the _thing_ 's test results. The _thing_ that thought I was lower than dirt. How could my father care about that green-eyed monstrosity when he would barely even _look_ at me? 

"Sephiroth is regrettably headstrong, and that damnable Turk has no doubt fed him lies about the past and his place in the world. I should never have let him live, no matter how useful an experimental subject he was." 

"Interesting," the man with the sword said, in a lightly mocking tone of voice. "Normally, the Turks are known for being close-lipped." 

"It isn't the first time that Valentine has spoken out of turn. I suppose the only way to stop him will be to put him to a more permanent end." 

Turks. Tseng! Tseng was a Turk. And there were others—a big bald man, a shorter one with red hair . . . I couldn't remember their names, but hopefully it was just a matter of time. Neither of them was "Valentine", though. I couldn't remember anyone named that. 

Hojo had gone around behind me. I couldn't see what he was doing. That always made the back of my neck prickle, but there was nothing I could do about it. The straps of the harness that held me snugly in place inside the green wouldn't let me turn. 

"Changing out his poison bag?" the man with the sword asked, from where he sat in the corner of the room. 

"He's absorbed enough of the initial J-Cell formula. Now that his system is primed, we will move on to the S-Cells." 

"I still can't believe that you're trying to clone Sephiroth that way." 

Clone . . . Sephiroth? 

"The result will inevitably be inferior to the original, but if the initial experiment succeeds, I should be able to make more of them. If each of them has only twenty percent of the original's power, ten of them should be enough to put him under restraint until he can be re-educated." 

"Oh? What of your army from the skies? Could they not restrain your wayward specimen for you?" The man with the sword spoke in a light, cutting tone. As though he didn't care what Hojo thought of what he was saying. 

"I cannot believe you helped conquer Wutai without mastering basic strategic thinking or ever creating any kind of contingency plan for one of your forays. The only response the call has received thus far is clearly an automated pattern, a notification it is being passed on. Until we have something more—How dare you laugh?!" 

The man with the sword choked his laughter off. "It merely amuses me to hear you forcing yourself through such _convolutions_ to avoid admitting that you have no idea what you're doing. I have few enough amusements, these days. If you truly believed your transmitter is talking to something, you would have no need to make alternative plans." 

"This was always the primary plan. The discovery of the transmitter was serendipity, nothing more." 

"The primary plan was always turning Rufus Shinra into a Sephiroth clone, when you were never successful in engineering the parasitic ability into the cells of your 'perfect specimen' to begin with? You missed your calling, Hojo. You should have been a writer of farce." 

I barely noticed the laughter this time. _Rufus . . . I'm Rufus! Rufus Shinra, Vice President of the Shinra Corporation! And that bastard Hojo is a subordinate! How dare he keep me here!_ I thrashed, slamming my feet into the clear surface in front of me, fumbling at the harness that bound me with fingers that felt like sausages. 

"Hmph. It seems you've regained consciousness, Specimen R. I suppose I'll have to up your mako dosage along with the rest. Not unexpected, but . . . a nuisance. Well, those old memories should be overwritten with something more worthy soon enough. This is an older culture, and Sephiroth was quite obedient until recently." 

The bastard was talking about overwriting my memories with those of that green-eyed freak! 

I redoubled my efforts to free myself. Useless. There were tubes in my arms, too firmly fastened to pull free, and something green was running down one, and something red down another. 

**_NO!!!_**

Fire in my veins . . . fire . . . green . . . _black . . . nothing._


	36. Chapter 36

**Zack**

The pilot the infantry had loaned me began to circle the helicopter to the left. "Is there even anywhere to land here?" 

"Up by the reactor," I said. "It's marked, just like any other helipad. Don't try anywhere else unless you want me to have to pry us out of a wreck." _Welcome home. The jungle still wants to kill you._ I grinned. Jungle I could handle. Much better than desert. I was sure I still had sand in my boots from running after that stilva in Corel. 

"Aye-aye, major." 

The reactor clearing, hacked out of the jungle and maintained with defoliant, always looked wrong to me. Like it didn't belong. But it was the town's major industry, along with the plantations and stuff that it supplied power for. _Ninety percent of the world's natural rubber comes from the Gongaga region._ Weird how I remembered almost nothing from school, but that had stuck in my head. 

We set down neatly on the pad—the pilot was pretty good for a loaner, but I missed Reno's sarcastic comments. The Turk _hated_ being in any town that wasn't big enough to have a topless bar, yo. 

I was out of the helicopter before the blades had stopped turning, breathing in the familiar smell of green and rot and, well, _life_. The jungle stinks, but it's a different kind of stink from Midgar. A _vital_ smell, Angeal had called it. And I'd missed it, although I was never, ever going to tell anyone so. 

Anyway, I could do more of the homecoming thing later. Right now, I had some monsters to chop. 

There wasn't anyone out here to meet us, so I trotted around to the front of the power plant while the pilot secured the helicopter. Like most mako plants, there was only one door you could use to get into the operating section. 

I swapped salutes with the troopers at the security booth—the Gongaga plant wasn't half-mothballed like the Nibelheim one, so there were a lot of people working here. 

"Major Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, to see the director," I said. 

"Right, sir. Wait here." 

Director Silverstein was a typical Shinra managerial type, middle-aged with thinning hair, and not at all used to the Gongaga climate, judging from the sweat pouring off him as he followed the guard down the steps to the security booth. 

"Major, I'm so glad you could come! We have a problem. A rather large problem. With tentacles." 

"Y'know, that's the mildest description of a malboro I've ever heard," I said—even Angeal, during the fiasco at Icicle Inn, had had a few choice words about the creatures. 

"It's taken over the research lab. Unfortunately, two of the scientists are already dead. Or we think they are. Searching the building for them would be impossible under current circumstances." 

"It breathed on them?" Minified, confused frogs could be really tough to find before they died from the poison. 

"Precisely. Have you . . . fought malboros before?" 

"Yeah." It was only stretching the truth a little bit, right? It would hardly make them feel better about this if I said, _One malboro, and my mentor took it out while I was busy hopping around falling into snowbanks._ Besides, this time I'd come prepared. "Just show me where the research lab is, and I'll handle it." 

The lab was attached to the reactor building, but there were no doors between the two, which I bet had all the workers feeling relieved. There was a main door, a side door, and a loading dock on the side furthest from town. I picked the side door, since there was probably a narrow, malboro-unfriendly hallway inside it. Director Silverstein unlocked it for me, then got the hell out of there. Which was probably the most sensible thing he could do, under the circumstances. 

I eased the door open. Yup, nice narrow hallway, no malboro in sight. Good. I slipped inside, eased the door shut again, then took off the bag I'd been carrying ever since I'd gotten off the helicopter and laid it on the floor. No one had even asked why I was carrying my luggage around. I guess they thought it was normal for high-level SOLDIERs, or maybe that I would try to skewer them for asking, the way Genesis would have. 

I'd been hauling it with me for a reason, though. And I was just as glad I didn't have to explain it in public. 

I put the headband on first, and that was okay, even if I knew it didn't go with my uniform at all. The white cape, though . . . Vince was the only person I had ever met who could get away with wearing a cape in public. Well, maybe Seph, but _he_ could get away with wearing a tutu or a wombat costume or nothing at all, just by looking absolutely confident and absolutely indifferent. Neither of which I could pull off. 

I added the Peace Ring, which hopefully wasn't going to mess up my grip on the Buster Sword, and sighed just a little. I might feel ridiculous, but I was also protected against being confused, frogged, minified, or put to sleep. As for poison, I would just have to deal. I'd brought a half-dozen vials of antidote, and they were all stuck in my belt within easy reach. Plus, as a SOLDIER I had high natural resistance to poisons anyway. 

Now to find the malboro. 

I hadn't done anything as hard on the nerves as stalking a monster through this stupid building since the last raids in Wutai. I had to consciously regulate my breathing and my tension so that I wouldn't wear myself out before making contact. If the monster had come inside by normal means, it would be in the back storage area by the loading dock (since that was the only door it could fit through), but if it had appeared spontaneously, the way that bagnadrana had in Midgar, it could be in any space that was big enough for it. Any room. Any hallway. Which meant I had to check every single one, and stop at each corner to hold my breath and listen for weird bubbling or hose-slapping sounds. I did remember what the creatures sounded like. In fact, I doubted I would ever forget. 

One room at a time. Some of them were locked. Most of those opened to my keycard (hooray for Shinra lock and access standardization), but there were a few that didn't. I figured I would check everywhere else first, and then come back. Just in case they were sealed for a reason. 

I thought I was getting towards the back of the building when one of my listening sessions finally caught me that hose-slapping noise. Okay, malboro, check. Maybe near the loading dock, check. Not in the hallway, at least. 

I went to the nearest door and listened to it. Nothing. Across the hall to the next-nearest, then . . . yeah, that was it. Slap-slap-bubbly-slap. 

I flattened myself against the wall before passing my keycard through the lock. Then I opened the door with my left hand . . . and quickly snatched it back as a burst of ice magic shot through the opening. So Mister Ugly knew I was here. 

I ducked around the edge of the doorframe as quickly as I could, and flattened myself a second time against a shelving unit to one side of the door, so that I hopefully wouldn't make as good a target. Then I looked around for the malboro. 

People argue about whether they're plants or animals (and whether anything should have that many eyes). If they were plants, this one should have been feeling a little wilted after several days indoors in the dark, and the fact that it clearly wasn't was a vote for the animal theory, as far as I was concerned. (And as for the eyes, I vote "no".) It was standing in the middle of the storage area, among some tumbled shelves, and looking around. And around, and around. Okay, it probably thought it had hit me, and was checking for other threats now. So there was no time like the present to get up close and personal with it. 

I shifted my grip on the Buster Sword and charged forward. The malboro puffed up, and I gritted my teeth, because I knew what was going to happen next, and even with the precautions I'd taken, it wasn't going to be fun. 

It smelled even worse than I remembered. Which I hadn't thought was possible, but maybe getting frogged had distracted me the last time. And I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to see from inside the cloud of vile-smelling breath (another reason to vote "animal"—who ever heard of a plant that _breathes_?) I could feel the stinging nastiness of its poison as I swung the Buster Sword down, guessing at the right distance. 

Well, I did catch it, because I felt the resistance near the point of the Buster Sword, and when the breath thinned out a bit, I could see a long, leaky dark green streak at the corner of the malboro's mouth. That wasn't enough to kill it, though, and I had to play jump-rope with the lower tentacles to get in closer. The things you had to do when you were in SOLDIER. And really, we should add something like whipping ankle-level tentacles to the standard obstacle course to prepare the new Thirds for this. 

I stabbed the thing in its rightmost eye and got slapped in the ribs by a tentacle for my trouble. The tentacles weren't very powerful as attacks went, but I was going to have bruises for the rest of today. And now it was breathing in again. Well, that was just too bad for it. 

I stabbed it in the open mouth, feeling the Buster Sword scrape along the bits-that-weren't-quite-teeth. I hoped they didn't leave any scratches behind. The malboro kind of . . . wiggled. I think it wanted to scream, but just didn't have the parts. 

I ripped the Buster Sword upward, which got me a nice gushy mess from the malboro. I hadn't thought its blood—sap—whatever was under high enough pressure to hit the ceiling like that. It rained down and got in my hair (ugh, now I needed a shower) as the thing thrashed and fell over. 

I waited until it stopped moving, then walked around and poked it from several different angles to make absolutely sure it was dead. Then I drank an antidote to get rid of the poison sting, and sat down on a crate to clean the Buster Sword. Maybe I should try to get a shower, too—there had to be one of those emergency-chemical-spill showers somewhere in the building, and most of Gongaga didn't have indoor plumbing. Yep, that sounded like a plan. 

It was while I was looking for a way back to the door without having to step over the dissolving malboro corpse that I realized something wasn't quite right. I mean, blotches of dried out malboro sap-gunk I could understand, assuming it had bumped into some of the shelves and torn a tentacle, but those blotches weren't supposed to be divided in half with a space in the middle that made a nice right-angled corner. It was like the space Vincent had pointed out in the Nibelheim lab, where the dust was missing in the shape of a journal: there should have been a box there. But I couldn't find it, even after checking around to see if the malboro had picked it up and thrown it or something. I did find some other spaces on the tightly-packed shelves that looked suspicious, though. 

"I'm gonna have to ask them to do an inventory," I said, rolling my eyes at the dead malboro. "'Cause there shouldn't have been anyone taking stuff out after you got in here." Or maybe . . . It was a ridiculous idea, but I started moving tentacles around so that I could get a better look at the parts closest to the body. And ended up blinking at the thing, because if those weren't shackle marks around the bases of the major tentacles, then I was Genesis Rhapsodos. 

_I wonder how they kept it from breathing on them._

I shook my head. Really, _oh, shit_ was a more appropriate reaction. Someone had hauled a damned _malboro_ in here to cover for the fact they were stealing stuff. Stealing supplies. From a Shinra research lab. Who would want to—oh, shit, shit, shit. _Science_ supplies. Which meant that just one name popped into my head. 

_Hojo._

Maybe that was jumping to conclusions, though, until we found out exactly what was missing. If it was chemicals that could be used for bombs or something, then it was probably AVALANCHE and not Hojo. Or, if it was drugs or something that could be used to make them, it could be anyone. Well, anyone who had some way of getting a malboro from the north continent all the way down to the Gongaga jungle, but some of the better-funded drug kingpins probably could. 

I really wasn't good at this stuff, so I would just ask for the inventory and give a list of missing items to Seph to sort out. And I hadn't had a chance to tell him about what Aerith had said to me before we'd all been forced to leave on our various missions. Damn. He was going to be mad at me. Even if it wasn't my fault that he'd given me the afternoon off and then left for Mideel before supper. I mean, I had a PHS. I could have phoned him, but _no_ , I'd wanted to talk in person. To make sure no one was eavesdropping. Even though, thanks to Vincent, the Turks were in our corner now. 

_Shower first,_ I told myself. _There's nothing you can do about it now—you know exactly how good PHS reception_ isn't _here_. Tomorrow, when I got back to Midgar, would hopefully be soon enough. 

I found my bag and found the shower and got cleaned up, and Director Silverstein was happy to hear I'd dealt with his problem. Less happy when I asked him to do the inventory, but I knew he'd get it done anyway. And after that, I was off-duty until it was time to leave town tomorrow morning. 

So I walked out of the gates of the reactor and down the winding path to the town proper. As I got closer to the cluster of conical houses, I started to run into people, and every single one of them stared at me. Not because they recognized me, either. I could tell. Well, the last time I'd been here, I'd been younger than Cloud—and not really much bigger than him. 

As I passed by the general store, I heard someone say, "Heh, look at that. Doesn't he think he's hot stuff. Betcha I can beat him up." 

"Oh, for the love of . . . Simmer down, Lowell. I mean, just look at the muscles on that guy. He'd smash you into paste without even pulling out his sword." 

I glanced casually to my left, and somehow kept my jaw from dropping open. _That_ was Lowell Darling? The only guy in Gongaga with a worse last name than me? The guy with a chip on his shoulder that had made him the worst bully in town? I remembered him as towering over me—he'd been a couple of years older, after all—but now all I saw was a wiry little drunk. I'd grown and he hadn't, it was that simple. I just didn't usually see the results of my mako-fueled growth spurts all at once like this. 

I was starting to understand why Cloud had hidden behind his infantry uniform the whole time we'd been in Nibelheim. This was . . . getting kind of freaky. 

My parents' house was about three more doors down from the general store. I probably shouldn't have ducked inside without knocking, because I surprised my mom at the stove and she nearly gashed her finger open on the vegetable knife. 

I smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of my head. "Hi, Mom, I'm home." 

"Zack? Is that really you, Zack?" When she came over to hug me, her head fit under my chin. _Triple-_ weird. I was probably taller than Dad now too, come to think of it. _Quadruple_ -weird. 

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to send a message ahead, but this was a spur-of-the-moment mission, y'know? I was even kind of surprised when the General gave me this one and not the one for Wutai. I guess he figured _someone_ deserved a vacation, after all the running around we've been doing." Or more likely, he thought Vince's Turk training would be of more use in Wutai than the ability to hit things really hard with a sword. Oh, well. I didn't want to go back there, so it all worked out. 

"Your father and I are glad to see you any time, you know that," Mom said. "Although I'm going to have to find some way to bulk up tonight's stew. When did you grow into such a mountain?" 

"It took a few years." And I probably should have come back here at least once during that time. _Bad Zack._ "Look, let me find somewhere to put my stuff and then I'll help you peel potatoes or whatever." 

"You've never peeled a potato in your life." 

I rubbed the back of my head again. "I have, actually. Angeal had me do it sometimes." It hurt less to say his name now than it had before. Maybe I was finally getting over it. 

Yeah, right. 

But . . . 

_You can't move backwards, only forwards._ Angeal had said that to me a couple of times, when I'd really screwed something up in an exercise and I'd tried to do a take-back. Life doesn't give you do-overs, so neither had he. He'd always been strict about the weirdest things. 

I reached behind me and touched the Buster Sword. Maybe it was going to take a long time, but I would pick up the pieces and do my best to move forward, because I knew it was what he would have wanted.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for weird biological technobabble written by someone whose last biology class of any sort was a good quarter century ago. Meaning that parts of it may not make much sense. Oh, and I once again postulated the existence of a non-combat materia that never appears in the games.

**Sephiroth**

"So let me sum this up," Zack said as he fiddled with the hilt of the Buster Sword, which was currently leaning against my office desk while he sat in the guest chair. Vincent was holding up the wall, while Cloud hovered by the door, looking a bit uncomfortable. _Note to self: tell Maintenance to add an additional chair to the furnishings._ "We've got Hojo _and_ Rufus Shinra both able to use this . . . Jenova mind-communication thing, a really old picture of Jenova from Wutai that shows her holding a sword that looks like Masamune, Vince's crazy summon-demon-thing talking about two people who maybe worked with Jenova back before the Cetra disappeared, the Planet screaming because it's scared of something _else_ falling from the sky sometime soon, monsters everywhere they shouldn't be, and biology supplies missing from the Gongaga reactor's lab. Did I miss anything?" 

Vincent looked up from the _Masamune_ folder we'd found in the science lab document storage area. "One thing. Or perhaps two. First, Masamune appears to have been found in the same excavation as Jenova, with three sealed-slot materia already in place. Professor Gast wrote some preliminary notes on it, but any attempt to study it seems to have ended when he left Shinra, or at least any further work isn't recorded here. And the night of Hojo's departure, Chaos said something about the sword—'The blade knows her master. Who would have thought he was strong enough to wrench her away from the hand she was forged to fill?'" 

"So Masamune was Jenova's sword once, but belongs to Seph now?" 

Vincent shrugged, and I reached out to finger Masamune's hilt. The thought that I had been carrying Jenova's sword all these years might have been revolting, if I hadn't been aware that I carried other aspects of Jenova with me far more intimately. And if I took Chaos' reported words at face value, the sword had chosen me over her. Another small proof that I was the stronger one. And that was something that I very much appreciated. 

"Masamune's history is merely a peripheral matter, in any case," I said. "In fact, I would go so far as to say that Jenova herself has become a peripheral matter, except in that she is related to Hojo and his plans. Clearly Rufus' sudden unexpected ability is related to him." Hojo had to have gotten away with at least one viable Jenova cell culture, or more likely he'd sent a specimen to whatever hidden lab he was now occupying in advance. "If Jenova had allies, and they are still at large, Hojo may have found a way to summon them. That would explain the Planet's fear that something else is about to arrive. We are fortunate that our wayward scientist seems to have left us a string to pull in the form of the missing supplies." The list of same that was lying on my desk included blood-mako agar, vital for culturing Jenova cells, along with assorted other consumables and perishables. 

"We'll have to be careful about false leads there," Vincent said. "Although he may have been arrogant enough to think the malboro would destroy the evidence." 

"None of that explains the monsters, though," Zack pointed out. 

" _Nothing_ explains the monsters," Cloud muttered from his spot near the door. "Well, normal monsters are like animals, right?" he added when all of us looked at him. "They're living beings that exist because two adult monsters decided to make little monsters. Just like the rest of us. I don't think there's anything that said, _we'll build a bagnadrana in the Midgar slums,_ and then pow! there's a bagnadrana. It doesn't make sense. I'd bet it was a _real_ bagnadrana and someone used something like an Exit spell on it to move it." 

It did reduce the number of variables involved in the matter very slightly. And it meant that the number of monsters we would have to deal with was large but finite. But other than that, I couldn't see how Cloud's theory was helpful. 

"So that just means that, instead of figuring out who's making monsters, we have to figure out who's swapping them ar—" Zack stopped in mid-sentence as someone knocked on the door, although all of us except, possibly, Cloud Strife, had been able to hear the approaching footsteps for several seconds now. 

"General, it's Doctor Rayleigh. May I speak to you?" 

That was . . . unexpected. I nodded to Cloud, and he opened the door. Rayleigh walked in carrying a tablet computer, and blinked as she took in the rather crowded room. 

"Well," she said. "General, I have some good news and some . . . odd news, and I think it might be better if I told you the latter in confidence." 

When I looked at her, she met my gaze without fear, disgust, or smug amusement—all things I was used to seeing from Hojo and his crew. Nevertheless . . . "Vincent, please verify for me that the doctor isn't armed." 

Rayleigh's jaw dropped. " _What?_ " 

"Hojo ambushed me once or twice with a tranquilizer gun. I don't wish to see that sequence of events repeated." Of course, I would kill her afterwards if she tried anything like that, but there were a range of unpleasant things she could do in the ten minutes or so it would take me to shake the drugs off. 

The doctor blinked. " _That_ was why there was a note in your file about dosages for . . . Ugh. Every time I think I've figured out how low Hojo was capable of going, I find another tunnel downward. I'm starting to wonder if he even knew there was such a word as 'consent'. Yes, please _do_ check me for weapons, in that case." 

While Vincent walked around to her side of the desk, I turned my attention to the other two SOLDIERs present. "Zack, Strife, we'll resume this at another time. I assume I don't have to remind you not to pass on sensitive information." 

Zack grinned. "No, but you're doing it anyway, aren't you? Don't worry, Spiky and I know how to keep our mouths shut. See you later." 

Vincent frisked the doctor efficiently, then caught my eye and shook his head. No weapons. Good. He also raised an eyebrow, and I returned his headshake and made a small motion toward the door— _go, for now._ I would tell him anything of interest later. 

The ex-Turk closed the door firmly behind him, leaving me alone with the scientist, who took the chair Zack had vacated. 

"Well," she said, "the good news is, we are now absolutely certain that there is no chance of yourself or any of the other SOLDIERs deteriorating the way Angeal Hewley and Genesis Rhapsodos did—and you know what it takes for a scientist to say we're certain about something. The colonels' condition was entirely due to an error in the methodology of Project G. You see, it turns out that Jenova herself was ill, or at least infected with some form of virus. Hojo seems to have spent a great deal of time hunched over a microscope, using a Fine Manipulation materia to select out the uninfected cells, which he then used to create the J-cell cultures used on you and the other SOLDIERs. Doctor Hollander seems to have been more interested in the infected cells, which have some interesting qualities of their own, but are not stable." 

"So Genesis and Angeal were also infected with this mystery virus?" I prompted. _Damn Hollander._ If the man hadn't been, as far as I knew, dead already, I would have been planning some method of killing him myself. 

"And every single copy created from them. The virus is the ultimate source of both the copying ability and the deterioration of those involved in Project G . . . except Gillian Hewley, whose immune system seems to have inexplicably thrown it off over time. My best guess is that that was due to her not having been exposed to mako while infected, but we don't have any samples of the virus to test." Rayleigh shrugged. 

"Which means that Jenova herself must have been deteriorating." I said it slowly, weighing the words. 

"Oh, yes. Judging from Doctor Hojo's notes, Jenova was in quite a late stage of the infection." 

I considered that. Considered the symptoms I'd seen in Genesis and Angeal, the abilities of the virus, and the fact that Jenova had been found in the middle of a battlefield with a very large sword near to hand. The only conclusion I could reach was that the virus, even if not originally intended as a biological weapon, had most likely been opportunistically used as such in whatever ancient war had laid Jenova low. 

Ancient. Cetra. Had they been Jenova's allies, or her enemies? Was there anything left behind, in the few surviving monuments of that era, or the memories and peculiar gifts of a girl who grew flowers, that could ever answer that question? 

"There's more," Rayleigh said. "Even healthy Jenova cells are mildly viral, and they're qualitatively different from normal human cells in some very specific ways. For one thing—do you know what triploidy is?" 

Inevitably, since I had grown up in a biology lab. "The presence of three complete sets of chromosomes in a cell. Are you claiming that Jenova is naturally triploid?" 

A nod. "It's abnormal, as I'm sure you're aware, but Jenova carries what appear to be two sets of human, or possibly Cetra, chromosomes—Hojo sequenced them, and they appear to code for a brown-haired, light-eyed, light-skinned woman of greater-than-average height—and a third fundamentally _not-_ human set that includes a recognizable gene that alters hair pigmentation, in addition to a great deal more that we don't yet understand. Hojo left copious notes on the subject, but the Turks say the files may have been tampered with, so I don't trust them. We're redoing the analysis from zero. But we do know that at least some of the nonhuman genes are dominant and expressed. That's oddity number one, if you like." 

"And number two?" I ordered my stomach to settle down, miserably insubordinate thing that it was. 

"Number two has to do with epigenetics. Healthy J-cells contain a number of mechanisms found in no other creature, some of which appear to control gene expression and energy absorption—we're just not sure _how_ yet." Rayleigh licked her lips. "Injecting a human with Jenova cells and mako causes both the non-human chromosomes and the epigenetic control factors to be passed on to other cells, although it isn't always tidy or complete. Third Class SOLDIERs have about three to ten percent altered cells, with obvious effects on muscle, bone, and nervous tissue. You . . . well." 

She went quiet, the same way Vincent had when he'd been unable to tell me the name of my father, only unlike him, she was unable to push through it. It hardly mattered, though. I was fairly sure I already knew what she was trying to say. 

"My cells are all altered, aren't they." 

"Yes. Judging from the available samples—" Which Hojo no doubt had neatly lined up in a freezer somewhere, with labels indicating which tissue they'd been taken from, plus the time, date, and circumstances. "—that's been true since before your birth." 

I bottled my reaction up tightly. The fact that I'd guessed everything but the small details previously made it easier. "And am I suddenly going to sprout wings, tentacles, or other random appendages?" The difference in age between Genesis, Angeal, and myself was slight—less than a year from oldest to youngest—and Angeal had had no real warning, no sudden deterioration in his condition before his wing had suddenly broken loose. If something of that nature was going to happen to me, I might well be approaching the crisis. 

"We don't think so. At least, not _suddenly_. We . . ." She stopped talking again for a long moment, chewing on her lower lip. "I think I need to start from the beginning, even if there's a small chance of breaching confidentiality. There is one person never exposed to Jenova who carries an irregular distribution of triploid cells with non-human chromosomes and the accompanying complex cell mechanisms." 

I narrowed my eyes. One person, whose records Hojo had held, never exposed to Jenova, and someone I knew, or she wouldn't be worried about a breach in confidentiality . . . "Vincent." I waved away the next thing she tried to say. "I know you can't actually confirm that." I'd made a point of reading the code of biomedical ethics Shinra researchers signed off on, once very long ago when I'd still been naive enough to believe I'd be able to use it against Hojo. I'd given up on that idea when I'd discovered that his violations were so flagrant they had to be an open secret condoned by the administration. "And you think some of these cellular oddities may govern his transformations." 

"In . . . the subject we're discussing, certain systems become active in moments of extreme pain and stress. In the two Project G subjects, the onset of Genesis Rhapsodos' physical degeneration seems to have acted as the required stressor—the effect of his condition on Angeal Hewley was mental, but severe nonetheless. In you . . . we don't know. Your records show that you've been badly enough injured several times that it should have activated, but it didn't do so. It's possible that some portion of the system that was incomplete or broken in them is functioning correctly in you, and restraining any transformation you may be capable of. It's also possible that the transformations are an unintended side effect, and no such thing will ever happen to you at all. Or that you have conscious control and need to learn how to activate the ability. We don't have enough data. Or any means of getting any, really." 

Yes, I could see that. Only a handful of subjects, all created by different protocols, no controls, no means of picking important results out of the background noise of individual variation. And no ethical way of recreating any of the initial experiments. "What about Hojo's condition at the time he left?" 

"If his notes can be trusted, Hojo was trying to develop his own version of the mystery virus, and he injected himself with that, as well as J-cells and Mako, a day or so before he vanished. The old president was threatening to cut his funding—something about a lack of results from the Neo-Midgar project—so I suppose he was desperate. We only have fragmentary notes on his version of the virus, and again no samples, but what we do know about it suggests that his emotional state was severely compromised by the time he started rampaging through the tower." 

Hojo had to have promised Regulus Shinra some kind of results from my visit to Nibelheim. All the pieces seemed to fit, in other words—a little too neatly, if anything. 

"Was there anything else, Doctor?" I asked. 

"A little bit. First, this contains all the raw results, analyses, and Hojo's and my notes on you and Jenova. I thought that you, if anyone, had the right to that information." She put the tablet she'd been carrying down on my desk. "This has no network capability, so as long as you keep it physically secure, there should be no chance of anyone else seeing what's on it. The other thing is that there's one kind of common sample missing from all the assays on you, with no indication as to why. I want to make it clear that this is a request and not an obligation, General, but would you provide us with a semen sample, just to complete our records?" 

So Hojo had kept that one secret completely, had he? Even in his most private notes. To avoid giving any indication that his "perfect specimen" was in any way less than perfect, no doubt. 

"No, I will not." I gave her a measuring look, and added, "I'm aware that triploidy generally results in sterility, in organisms where it's even viable. I don't think it's necessary to confirm that, and I am not, at this point, interested in satisfying the curiosity of the Science Department regarding how much mako I shed in my seminal fluid." She was smart enough, no doubt, to realize that I was testing her to see whether or not she really cared about her subjects' consent. Or had she made the request knowing that I would test her in just this way, with the intent of building my trust? A crumbling, precarious stack of motivations. Sooner or later the pieces would come crashing down, but not, I thought, yet. 

"That's . . . understandable. Thank you for your time, General, and I'll see you next month for your regular check-up." 

We nodded to each other. She left my office, and I listened to the sound of her footsteps walking away until they were no longer audible over the background noise of this part of the floor. Only when I was certain she was well on her way back to the Science Department did I rise from my chair and pull Masamune from her stand with a jerky, less-than-controlled motion. 

I forced myself to stop right there, with the sword in my hand, and take a few slow, deep breaths. _Not here,_ I told myself. The room was private, but I knew that it wouldn't remain so for long if I let loose whatever was gnawing at my brain. I didn't even dare let enough of the emotion surface to allow me to examine it. If I did, I wasn't sure I would be able to come to my senses again until I'd blown out the side of the Tower. I needed somewhere I could freely commit explosive violence. There weren't a lot of options for that inside Midgar, and the land around the edge of the city was so barren that I would have Silver Elite with telephoto lenses watching my every move out there. That left the Train Graveyard in the slums as the best of several poor options. 

With my sword in its familiar place at my back, I emerged into the outer office. Zack appeared like magic in the doorway of the little cubbyhole where he _should_ have been taking care of the less-urgent paperwork I'd delegated to him, and drew in a breath to speak . . . but was interrupted by a shadow appearing between myself and him. Vincent shook his head warningly at Zack, and the younger man retreated back to his desk. 

My shadow kept pace with me as I went around the back of the building to the main freight elevator, which was one of the few that could actually access all of the Shinra Building's floors. During emergencies, it was dropped to the bottommost sub-Plate level, and a cap of mako-annealed steel placed over the shaft, making it the only entrance that I knew for certain had never been used by intruders. It groaned into motion when I selected "B6" from the control panel, and shot down with enough speed to make my ears pop. Shinra had never cared much about the comfort of its custodial staff. 

Vincent had either been expecting the discomfort, or didn't think it worth mentioning. Which was just as well. I was in no mood for conversation. 

B6 was the infantry garrison's storage level, but I was less interested in its contents than its architecture right now. The hatch I'd been headed for was in the ceiling of a dead-end corridor, and had to be opened by turning a heavy wheel, like the pressure door on a submarine. Once open, it admitted the stench of the slums and gave access to a narrow maintenance platform with no guardrail, five stories above the ground. 

I stood at the edge of the platform for a moment, while Vincent scrambled up out of the hatch. Then I stepped off. 

It was like jumping from a helicopter without a parachute, something I had done more than once in Wutai. The air screamed past my ears, and I balanced myself against nothing as my coat whipped around me, knowing I would regret it if I hit the ground the wrong way. 

In the end, I didn't hit the ground as such. I landed on top of a discarded traincar instead, leaving a good-sized dent in it even though I used my knees to absorb most of the impact. I pulled Masamune from her scabbard as I jumped to the actual ground, and she sang softly as I activated the nameless Command materia sealed in her hilt. 

The monsters here were more of a joke than anything—deenglow and ghosts and the odd cripshay or eligor. I could have defeated most of them with a single punch, let alone my sword, but the truth was that I was mostly beating up on the train cars, hacking apart the rusted metal at blurring speed until my breath came in desperate pants. 

I wasn't sure it was helping. I wasn't even sure what was wrong. Dr. Rayleigh's information hadn't been surprising except in the details. And knowing those didn't make me any more freakish than I had ever been. 

Not human. Never human. Not even the tiniest little fragment of me. Not a single cell. Why did it _matter_? I'd never even really _wanted_ to be human, except in vague, childish dreams of vengeance on Hojo. _If I turned into something ordinary, then he'd be sorry!_ I thought I'd been about three or four when that had passed through my mind, with Professor Gast still alive to shield me from the worst of Hojo's excesses. 

Why did the knowledge that I was unique now produce a sickening, twisting wrench inside me? Because my singularity had been something Hojo had wanted? Because it meant . . . that I would never have what everyone else around me seemed to take for granted? I'd already known that as well. Three parents, and one was dead and one was a monster and one was a dead monster. That was not a normal family configuration, but my idea of what did constitute a normal family was mostly based on a semi-sarcastic explanation Genesis had given me years ago, when he'd realized I wasn't asking the question as a joke. 

. . . I couldn't seem to reason my way through this. It was as though something was boiling inside me as I turned more empty railway cars into scrap metal mixed with monster parts. It stole my breath and dropped me to my knees and forced its way up my throat as a hoarse scream when I tilted my head back to search for air. 

There was a presence in front of me, watching silently. _Vincent._ Close enough to touch, and instinctively, I did, reaching out right-handed, still on my knees, to grasp his belt and pull him closer. He came without resistance, letting me wrap my arm around his waist and bury my face in the front of his shirt as his hand slowly came to rest on top of my head. He smelled of mako and behemoth and gun oil . . . and somehow, of reassurance. 

"I told you," he whispered, just a thread of sound. "I'm not going to leave you. It doesn't matter where you go, or what you become." 

Maybe those were the right words, and maybe the words themselves didn't matter so much as the solid warmth of his body. The proof that I wasn't alone. I felt a single hot tear leak from the corner of my eye, and that tiny release seemed enough to make the wave of emotion die down again, leaving me feeling limp and spent as Vincent stroked my hair.


	38. Chapter 38

**Cloud**

Thankfully, the second mako shot didn't kick my ass nearly as much as the first one. The forms did, though, and the conversations. I had to explain _three times_ , to three different people including the new Science Department head, that I knew what was in the shots, that I'd actually _seen_ Jenova and knew that J-cells could end up turning me into something freaky with blue skin and wings and tentacles, and I was going through with this _anyway_. And then I had to listen while they rattled on about "synergy" and "unprecedented uptake" while they squinted at my blood through microscopes. _Then_ they finally gave me the shot—just a shot this time and not an IV, thick mako that made the veins in my arm burn and glow green—and let me stumble out dazed into the sixty-seventh floor elevator lobby, where Zack was waiting. 

"You okay, Spiky?" 

"Kinda woozy," I admitted. "I think maybe I'd better sit down for a while." 

"Hah. Fine. We can go back to my place and watch a bad movie or three. Invite Kunsel, maybe. I'm having to be serious _all the time_ these days, and it's getting kind of hard to deal with. Time to blow off some steam before I turn into a prune-faced asshole like Seph. I'd take you downside instead and see if we could fill you up with Aerith' mom's apple pie, but until everyone's favourite General gets back from wherever he ran off to, I'm kind of stuck on the Plate." 

"Wait a minute—the General _ran off_?" The thought of Sephiroth running away from something instead of charging forward was mind-boggling. I went a little cross-eyed thinking about it, and just about lost my balance. 

"I don't know how else to put it. A few minutes after Dr. Rayleigh left, he came charging out of his office like his pants were on fire—not _technically_ running, but you could tell he wanted to be somewhere else, and I don't think it was because someone called in another monster report." 

"Do you think he's going to be okay?" I might have learned that Sephiroth wasn't some kind of untouchable god, but I also knew he wasn't weak. Whatever Rayleigh had dumped on him must have been horrible. 

"Vince went with him. He's probably the best person to deal with this, anyway. He seems to understand what makes Seph tick better than the rest of us." 

"They kind of clicked right from that first day, didn't they? Almost like love at first sight. Friendship at first sight?" I giggled. The hallway Zack was half-dragging me along was going green and smeary, so the mako must have gotten to my head. 

Zack snickered. "Can you imagine those two in love? Talk about scary. I mean, I don't think Seph has the first clue. Which means he would either freeze up or try to _gather data_ , as he puts it if you can catch him off-guard. And Vince would go along with it, because he doesn't let stuff like that bother him." 

I imagined General Sephiroth giving Vincent Valentine some of Aerith' flowers. It made me giggle again, just something about the two grim men with their oversized weapons and the innocent bouquet. What would either of them even _do_ with flowers? I was pretty sure I knew everything Vincent owned—we _were_ living in the same room, after all—and I couldn't think of one single thing he could have used as a vase. 

"Wow, you're loopy, aren't you? They must have given you some pretty bubbly mako this time. Wonder how much I'm gonna have to drink to catch up? Have to take notes, I guess." Zack steered me into the front room of his small apartment, and I wrinkled my nose because it smelled of gym socks. Ugh. "Just a sec while I get myself a bottle and pop some popcorn, 'kay, Spiky?" 

Bad horror movies are even funnier when they're tinted green with mako-drunk, and Zack laughed right along with me. Good times, the kind I'd never really had before I'd met Zack. The thought made me feel a bit sniffly. 

"Cloud, you okay?" 

"Just wondering why I stayed in Nibelheim so long." 

"Huh?" 

"It's a sucky place. Pretty much everyone hated me." Midgar was better, even with all the crazed monsters and crazy people. I was a SOLDIER now. I could do stuff that mattered. _Had done_ stuff that mattered in a small way, like accidentally firing off a Cure in a dragon zombie's face. 

"What about Tifa? She doesn't strike me as that kind of gal." 

"Tifa . . ." Smiling at me. _I never even got to ask you out._ "Tifa's always been great, but her dad treated me like crap. Didn't like me getting near her." 

"His loss," Zack said, grabbing another handful of popcorn. "I mean, if things keep on going the way they have been, you're gonna end up being famous, right? SOLDIER First Class by the time you're twenty-five, with your own fanclub and all the rest." 

"How's _your_ fanclub doing, anyway? Gotten that magic hundred members yet?" Zack's fanclub was called _Puppy Love_ , and he'd told me it had started up not long after Angeal became his mentor. It hadn't grown much since then, though. 

"Ugh. No, and I don't get it. Why the hell does someone like _Vincent Valentine_ have more fans than I ever did, and after just _two weeks_? Never mind a _hundred_ fans, his fanclub's going to be hitting _four_ digits soon. I'm never going to catch up." Zack gave me a woebegone look so exaggerated it made me snicker. 

"It's probably because he's mysterious," I said after thinking about it for a moment. "Your life's a total open book, and your fanclub already knows everything there is to know. Vincent, on the other hand, just kind of showed up one day, he isn't really social, and I'll bet you that the records from when he was in the Turks are eighteen kinds of classified. And those fangirls aren't going to be satisfied until they know the names of his third cousins and where his grandparents' chocobo farm was." 

"I still can't believe that. I mean, can you see Vince mucking out a chocobo stall?" Zack laughed, and I had to admit that the idea was kind of funny. Gun, ragged cape, glowing eyes . . . and a pitchfork. 

"Can you see any of the Turks doing it?" I countered. 

"Hmm. Rude would just go ahead and do it, if he had to. Reno would complain the whole time. Or try to proposition the chocobo. Tseng . . ." 

We exchanged a glance. 

" _Nah,_ " we both said at the exact same moment. And started laughing again. 

I slept on Zack's couch that night, and woke up early from a nightmare of Nibelheim burning down . . . although really, if Mom hadn't been in the middle of it all, I'm not sure how much of a nightmare it would have been. I wondered if mako always gave people such sucky dreams, and how Sephiroth stayed sane if it did, since he had to be practically pickled in the stuff. Maybe he was just so used to bad dreams he didn't know there were any other kind. That sounded like him, anyway. 

With nothing better to do, I went to one of the small-t training rooms to work on a particular sequence of sword moves Dane had shown me the other day, probably the toughest one he'd taught me so far. Dane wasn't much for complicated moves. He'd said he figured Sephiroth would teach me those, anyway. 

"Strife," said a familiar voice from behind me, and a shiver travelled up my spine. _Speak of the devil, and he appears,_ old Mrs. Elms back in Nibelheim would have said. Except that I hadn't said anything, and General Sephiroth was hardly the devil. 

I lowered my sword, turned to face him, and saluted. "Sir." There was no sign of whatever had gotten into the General last night, or maybe Zack had been exaggerating. Hell, he probably looked better and more put-together than I did, just now. He was also carrying a long, flat bundle wrapped in cloth under one arm, and I had no idea at all what that was about. 

"Come here." Sephiroth didn't check to see if I was following as he walked over to one of the benches by the wall. Propping the long bundle there, he began to unwrap it, while I stood beside him and stared. 

I'd known it was about the right size for a large-ish sword, but I'd never seen one quite like this before. The metal of the blade seemed to be in two pieces that fit one on top of the other near the hilt, but spread out as they swept away in a long, organic curve, until the last foot or so came to two separate, gently-curved points. It was made of some kind of dark metal, probably one of the fancy steels mixed with monster blood, and it shimmered with green-blue-purple iridescence. It had a double crosspiece, silvered, with one set of arms bent toward the blade and the other back toward the wielder's hand. The hilt seemed to be more dark steel, roughened just enough for a good grip, with two pairs of linked materia slots inside a V-shaped cutaway outlined in silver, and one more pair of slots in the pommel. All in all, it was maybe five feet long, narrower than the Buster Sword but wider than Masamune. 

"Her name is Echo," Sephiroth said. "What do you think?" 

For a moment, I could only wonder why Sephiroth always called swords _she_ , unless it was some weird kind of sexual fixation—no, no, no, I did _not_ just think that. Even if I'd seen him cuddling Masamune in his sleep while we'd been in Mideel. Sailors called ships "she", and Vincent called his gun "he", so it was probably just something like that. _And how do you go about throttling your inner Zack for giving you twisted ideas?_ Or had it been my inner Reno? 

I reached out towards the sword, hesitated halfway, and glanced at Sephiroth for permission. When the General offered me a slight nod, I curled my hands around the hilt and lifted the blade. Echo was a good, solid weight in my hands as I hefted her and slowly began the most basic kata that Zack had taught me back before Nibelheim, when I hadn't _known_ anything. As I sped up, the strange sword began to hum through the air. _Beautiful balance,_ I thought. I'd never held anything like her before. 

The kata came to an end, and I raised Echo for a better look at her crosspiece. There was something odd . . . Wait, what _was_ that? Those two spurs weren't just ornamental, they were . . . levers? I dug my thumbs in—not too hard, I didn't want to break anything—and applied a little pressure, then a little more. 

Suddenly, the sword slithered apart into two pieces, and I reacted just quickly enough to keep the smaller blade from landing on my foot and chopping off some toes. Echo was now two separate swords, each with a single point and a curved blade. With them separated, the smaller blade had the four main materia slots, and the cutout in the hilt of the bigger one that had allowed them to show through was a void. 

I shifted my grip, and was able to get a firm hold on both halves, but . . . how did I . . . 

"Pay attention, Strife, because it may be a while before I can find the time to demonstrate this again." With that, General Sephiroth reached over and took two practice swords from the rack, holding one in each hand. He stood relaxed for a moment, then brought them up to a guard position—left-hand one mid-high, right-hand one lower and further to the side—and held that for a moment before flowing into the kata at what must have been about ten percent of his normal speed. 

I knew I didn't have a chance of memorizing every move, so I tried to take in generalities instead. Mostly how he kept the two swords from colliding with each other. There was more than one way of doing that, I could tell that much. Alternating blows, or keeping the blades moving in roughly the same direction at the same speed, but there were some parts of the kata that were more complex and subtle, and I wasn't sure exactly how they worked. _I'll have enough to do with just learning the basics . . ._ so at first, I was going to be using Echo primarily in her fused, single-blade mode. Assuming I was right and Sephiroth meant to give her to me. 

No, wait, of course he was. _That_ was why he'd been chucking apples and materia at me in that hotel room in Mideel: to see how coordinated I was with my left hand. Sneaky. 

Sephiroth ended the kata in the same guard position he'd started out in, then put the practice swords back on the rack. Carefully, I tested a few individual moves with Echo's double blades. Keeping in mind the different things I needed to do with each hand was going to take practice. Well, I did know how to practice. Although I was supposed to go on my first real mission today. Zack had promised he'd help me pick one out and show me how the procedure worked in general. 

The General was still waiting, watching me with one eyebrow raised. 

"She's too good a sword for me, sir," was all I could find to say . . . and I almost clamped a hand over my mouth when I realized he had me doing the "she" thing too. But it also felt weirdly wrong to call Echo an "it". _Is this how he feels about Masamune?_

"You'll grow into her." Did he sound . . . satisfied? "Her harness is there, with the wrappings—for obvious reasons, she isn't suited to a full scabbard." 

It turned out to be something like the one Zack used for the Buster Sword, with a short holder for the sword tip, an edge guard to keep you from cutting anyone you brushed up against, and a magnet to hold the sword in place. Most SOLDIERs used a similar rig, although Sephiroth did carry Masamune in a full sheath and still somehow made the act of releasing his weapon look fast and easy. 

"She wasn't your sword before, or anything like that," I said, then winced as I realized how stupid it sounded. But Echo didn't have any signs of the wear that came with extended use. 

"No. Like Masamune, she was being used as a wall decoration for a while before I confiscated all the ones that were also practical weapons—security," the General said with a thin smile. "Echo was the final great work of an eastern master swordsmith who died around the time you were born. I expect he'd be happier to see her in your hands than hanging on a wall outside Lazard's old office. As for me, the first sword I ever wielded in earnest was a captured Wutainese nodachi. Shinra didn't initially issue blades to the first few groups of SOLDIERs, and my gun had jammed, so I took a sword off the nearest corpse, cut open the man coming at me, and kept going. Afterwards, President Shinra decided that there was a certain propaganda value inherent in having a corps of glowing-eyed, bullet-proof swordsmen with superhuman strength and speed, not least because it ties into certain Wutainese legends." 

It was hard to tell what he thought about anything he'd just said. After the half-joke about security, he hadn't shown much expression. 

"How old were you?" I asked. 

"Twelve." 

" _Great Mother of Winter!_ Um, sorry, sir." I mean, I'd realized that he'd been pretty young when the Wutai War had started—in the first pictures of him in the newspapers, you'd been able to tell he wasn't as tall as he was now—but I didn't realize they'd sent him there _that_ young. 

"It isn't as though I was ever a child in any meaningful way," Sephiroth said, but I thought he was talking mostly to himself. Then his eyes refocused on me. "I'll expect the report from your first mission by the end of the day, Strife." 

"Yes, sir," I said, and found myself saluting his retreating back. 

_I should be honoured that he trusts me enough to tell me things like that._ And I was, kind of. But I was also scared. Still. 

_Why do I keep thinking something's going to go wrong?_

_And what do I need to do to stop it?_


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW chapter! If you're not interested in Vincent's wet dreams, skip down to a paragraph or two before Chaos starts talking. (The one that starts "But these days that were crumbling steadily away beneath us . . ." is probably good.)

**Vincent**

My wrists were crushed in an iron grip, arms forcibly extended above my head as a hot mouth found my throat, sucking and licking and biting, and I had no thought of struggling free. Instead I twisted upward, rubbing my groin against that of the man on top of me, letting out a low growl. 

He raised his head to look at me. It was far too dark here for any normal man to see, but the light from our eyes outlined his features in an odd mingling of green and red. 

"Why such a hurry? We have all night." His voice was like the sensual purr of some great cat, his tiny smile as feral as a dragon's. His green eyes hooded with lust as intense as my own. 

"I've already waited long enough," I retorted. "I want you." Naked words, raw words, much clearer and more honest words than I would normally have given anyone . . . but we were already past words altogether, when it came to this. 

The grip on my wrists vanished as he sat back, lifting his weight from my chest. "Show me." More than a request, not quite an order, as he pushed a tube into my hand. _Presumably lubricant and not acid,_ the suspicious part of my brain that was trying not to be so suspicious right now wryly provided. A dab of it proved to be something usably slippery, and I reached down, my eyes never leaving his. 

I'd done this before, but not in a long time, and never as a show. It didn't seem to matter, not to him. Green eyes watched, rapt, as I fingered myself, then added more lube and pushed the first digit inside. It stung, but my erection never flagged. If anything, the edge of pain made it harder. _We should have been here long ago. It was only my cowardice that prevented it. Such a tiny pain is far less than I deserve._ Guilt and arousal and sheer hunger . . . 

Second finger. Third. My eyes flicked to the massive organ between his thighs, that twitched as though it felt my gaze, and I considered adding a fourth. If I had cared about the possibility of pain, I suppose I would have, but any injury done to my freakish body would heal. 

More lube. I reached for him, and he let me wrap my hand around his cock and stroke up and down the hard, hot length of it, as he shuddered and tensed, muscles flexing. The fluid beading at the tip had a hint of luminescence to it, mako taint. I smeared it with my thumb, stroking the head of his erection, making him hiss. The eyes that locked on mine as I spread my legs invitingly were narrowed to glowing green slits. 

He wasn't a gentle lover, surging straight in and filling my body without giving me an instant to get used to the sudden invasion . . . but gentleness wasn't what I wanted from him. Because he wasn't a gentle man. 

_No hidden barriers. No masks. Give me everything that's in you, and I will accept it and treasure it, because it's part of you, and neither of us is innocent._

I wrapped my legs around him and tried to pull him in harder with every thrust, clawed at his broad shoulders and left red stripes on his back until he grabbed my arms and pinned them again, splayed out to either side of me. And his eyes stayed locked on my face, searching, I knew, for any hint of revulsion, any flinch, any distaste. Any hint that this was not something I wanted. Any hint that I didn't accept him, as my barriers inevitably slipped low at the moment of climax. Which wouldn't be much longer now. I could feel the heat and the pressure building as that long, thick cock drove deep into me, rubbing across my prostate with every thrust. 

I wouldn't look away from him either. I didn't want him to have the least doubt. I cared for him too much for that. 

The sound that burst from my throat as I came was half-moan and half-growl and I wasn't even sure whether it was altogether mine— _confused shadows flickering at the edge of my thoughts for an instant as I forced them down again_ —but the voice that answered mine as he drove in deep one last time was scarcely more human. Mako burn invaded the recesses of my body as he pulsed inside me . . . and then it was done, and he was bowing his head, silver hair robbed of colour by the lack of light cascading down around us both like a curtain. 

"I didn't . . ." Robbed of passion, it was a much softer voice. 

"Did you think I would let you hurt me?" I asked, trying for a tone of neutral curiosity as I slid my right hand from his loosened grip and reached up to trace the line of his cheekbone with my trigger finger. 

"Not unless you wanted me to." 

"Not this time, Sephiroth." 

I blinked in exasperation as I woke to a narrow, empty bed, feeling the stickiness inside my pants. I couldn't hear a heartbeat, or any breathing except my own, so presumably Cloud had never come home last night. 

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a wet dream. Never while I'd been in the coffin, beset by nightmares. And certainly not during the period immediately before, while I'd been in Hojo's tender care. I was, in fact, fairly sure that it had been Lucrecia who had starred in the last one, and that it had been some time before Sephiroth's conception. Regardless, I had never expected this to happen. Normally, I was able to govern my body even in sleep, if I chose. 

But these days that were crumbling steadily away beneath us weren't normal. I felt stretched to my limit, even though officially all I was doing was killing monsters. Killing a lot of very tough monsters, granted, but it was still only a simple series of open battles. Not difficult work. 

Keeping Sephiroth sane, however, was the most difficult thing I had ever done. The General of SOLDIER had built walls around his soul that were as strong and thick as any Turk's, and such things had to be managed carefully. I was sure that he knew that as well, but the circumstances had left him balancing such a massive load of emotional strain that his normal outlets weren't enough. My implicit offer of support had stabilized him yesterday where a frenzy of violence hadn't, but it was a temporary thing. Time to process might help him. It would have to, because I couldn't think of what else to do. 

«You could offer him another outlet for his raw emotions, host-mine. It would be so very easy, wouldn't it? All you would have to do is stop holding back.» 

"Shut up," I growled to an empty room. "I don't know why you're so interested in him. You haven't said a single word about anyone else around me since I left the coffin." 

«Your attention is fixed on him,» Chaos replied. «And he _is_ an interesting specimen. The more I see of him, the more I like him. Strong and proud and vicious . . . Not only could you do much worse, I can't see you doing any better. Especially not with this absurd drive of yours to cede dominance to your mate.» 

"You don't know anything about sexual behaviour in humans, do you?" I slid my legs over the edge of the bunk and dropped to the floor to pick my way to the bathroom. 

«Your kind didn't exist yet when Gaia gathered me up out of nothing, but you're like any other animals—you use that set of behaviours for reproduction, for bonding, and for demonstrations of dominance. Two males obviously aren't going to reproduce together, so that leaves the other possibilities, and you are peculiarly confused about which one you want.» 

"Why would my motivation have to be exclusively one or the other?" 

A moment of inward silence. «And this would be one of the reasons I haven't yet borrowed your hand to tear myself from your flesh. You have this fascinating way of laying bare the nature of your species with a few well-chosen words.» 

Talking to Chaos could be oddly like talking to Sephiroth sometimes, I decided. The ignorance of many social customs and the sense of my interlocutor being on the outside of humanity looking in was the same. The largest difference was the subtle malice underlying everything Chaos said and did. It would be quite happy to see me go mad. 

I hoped the two of them never had a chance to speak directly. I couldn't see any way of keeping it from ending in a battle. 

By the time I was done in the shower, Cloud's clock had begun to make loud chocobo noises, and I slapped it off in passing. Six o'clock was far enough into the morning that one or more Turks might already be awake, so I headed down to the thirteenth floor to see if there were any useful results from their investigation of the Gongaga lab heist yet. 

As fate would have it, Reno was standing by the coffee maker when I arrived, waiting for the contents to drip through. He looked like he'd been up all night, but he still offered me a grin the moment I came into range. 

"Yo, Vince. I'd offer you a cup, but it isn't quite ready yet." 

I shrugged. Thanks to Hojo's tinkering, caffeine had no effect on me anyway, and I saw no reason to indulge in social ritual with the redhead. "Anything on the Gongaga lab?" 

Reno grinned. "Oh, yeah, we had one mother of a break there. Come to my office, since I'm the one that's got two chairs, and I'll tell you all about it. First, though . . ." He grabbed the coffee pot and refilled his mug, letting the last few drops dribbling through the filter splash onto the heating element, where they evaporated with a hiss. He took a large mouthful, apparently not caring whether he burned his tongue. " _Heaven._ Let's go." 

Reno's office actually had three chairs, although one of them had a stack of papers on it, and a potted plastic plant with dusty leaves. It was the sort of thing some Turks kept around to confuse their more perspicacious opponents—I'd used a particularly ugly fake "Cetra" statue I'd found among my father's effects for a similar purpose at one time, although why the man had hung onto such an awkward archaeological forgery, when he certainly had the knowledge to recognize it as such, was a puzzle I'd never solved. 

Reno sat down and propped both feet on his desk before he spoke. "It was easy to figure out which truck, since it was the last one to visit the building, but the plates came up as stolen. Not an amateur job either, yo. We figured we'd never see it again, but then some joker who's beachcombing south of town finds a burnt-out truck without any plates at all just sitting there, plus signs that someone was messing around with a boat. So we looked for boats." He took another gulp of coffee. "Dunno what it was like in your day, but there's practically no shipping in that area since the war, so it wasn't too hard to spot the only thing bigger than a local fishing boat to go through in the last month or so. It went from there to a spot north of Mideel, then started working its way up the coast to Junon. It isn't there yet—seems like it's not in any hurry. Veld's sending a couple of the juniors to check on it, but he doesn't figure we'll find anything, 'cept maybe a shit-ton of cocaine or bombs or something." 

"North of Mideel—that's agricultural, or used to be." The northern part of the island didn't get enough rain to sprout jungle the way the south did, but the Lifestream was still close to the surface, making the soil rich and fertile. Shinra had investigated the idea of building a major reactor there, then dropped it after something had come up during the exploratory excavations, if I remembered correctly. Beyond that, I didn't know much about the area and hadn't ever been there. Veld had, but from what he'd said, it was mostly dumbapple trees with a few scattered farmhouses and a tiny village built over the mining site, mostly to keep an eye on it. 

"Still is, so what would they want with stolen bio lab supplies? It isn't like they can use them to make the dumbapples grow better, yo." 

Reno wasn't that stupid, so I knew I didn't really have to answer the question. I wouldn't have thought an agricultural area would be Hojo's first choice of a lab site despite the abundant mako in the area. Agriculture means a lot of people poking around different areas of the terrain on an irregular basis, and possibly cropdusters flying overhead. And he would have to be more careful of how he disposed of leftover chemicals and unsuccessful experiments, since farmers tend to notice when someone messes up their crops. None of that makes hiding things impossible, especially if there's time for some advance setup, but . . . 

"No signs of transshipment?" I asked. 

"Hard to tell—satellites couldn't get a good view with all those trees in the way—but if they did, it was by land. And if they trucked it down to Mideel before sending it out again, we're back at square one, yo. Too much traffic in and out of there." 

That was possible, but it also would have been more than usually paranoid even for Hojo. "We'll assume the goods stayed in the area. Have someone check for land that isn't currently being worked, and that would be easily accessible from whatever beach they landed on—somewhere Hojo could roost without being disturbed. I'll be looking into another possibility." 

The name of the town they'd planted on top of the mine works was . . . Banora. I half-remembered seeing it mentioned in some other context recently . . . Rhapsodos, that was it. The hometown of Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. The Turks had burned down the town in an unsuccessful attempt to get at Rhapsodos. That implied that information about whatever digging Shinra had done in the area might be under a few more layers of security than usual, but not enough to keep it from someone with Turk clearances. 

I still didn't get along all that well with the computer equipment, but I'd learned how to make it disgorge more-or-less the information I wanted. Shinra had decided not to build a reactor in the Banora area because of . . . _large biological organism of unknown type, apparently in hibernating or trance-state . . ._ My eyebrows rose. Building a town on top of something like that, something Hojo had apparently not been able to figure out, seemed unusually reckless even for Shinra, but they'd probably wanted to make sure that no one else could get at the creature. And then they'd decided to have a war and forgotten all about it, or at least postponed any investigative project indefinitely. But Hojo . . . Hojo did love his toys. I doubted he would leave such an intriguing specimen alone for very long. 

«WEAPON,» Chaos murmured sleepily as I considered a photomosaic of the creature. «Emerald WEAPON. Planet's sword.» 

_What?_ "That thing is your—" I stopped, because I wasn't quite sure of the word, or even the relationship. The fragments I'd picked out of what Lucrecia and Chaos itself and even my father had told me had never added up to a whole explanation. I only knew there was a connection of some sort between Chaos and the thing called WEAPON. 

«Oh, no, that's one of the lesser ones. Intended to clean up big messes before they can grow into Planet-eating ones. Really, I'm surprised it's still asleep, but the Planet's probably arguing with itself again. There are enough human voices in the Lifestream that I can understand it not wanting to kill all of you off, even if you're doing a fair job of messing things up overall. The one you're thinking of is Omega, who won't rise out of the Planet's core while there's still life on the surface. _My_ job is to clean up the last little dribs and drabs and send them back to the Lifestream before Omega becomes its wings. Which is why I'm not incarnate very often. The Cetra recognized me as a necessary part of the cycle, but they never liked me very much. And _your_ people, of course, don't know anything at all.» 

"You could explain things to us." 

«Host-mine, _that_ is most certainly _not_ my job. Besides, it's much more amusing to watch you flail.» 

I spent several minutes staring at the picture on the screen in front of me without really seeing it. I felt as though I had brushed up against a well-hidden live wire. Methodically, I attempted to sort through a stack of puzzle pieces I'd collected that were only peripherally relevant to Hojo, that we'd been playing with for a while now without being able to fit them all together. 

One, if I accepted both the premise of a sentient Planet and Chaos' truthfulness—and although the demon loved poking at me, I couldn't remember it ever telling a direct lie—then humanity was doing something that put the world at a risk serious enough that it might end up waking up that ugly thing sleeping under the ruins of Banora and sending it out to slaughter people. 

Two, we had more and stronger monsters attacking the mako reactors than had ever been seen before. And some entity of considerable power seemed to be shuffling them around. That implied the reactors were part of the problem. Maybe something really was trying to shut them down. 

Three, it appeared Jenova's history might not be as simple as we had thought. The Science Department computers were on the same network as the rest of the building now, which meant Turk passcodes had gotten me into Rayleigh's files last night, after I'd seen Sephiroth off to bed. I'd wanted to know what had set him off, and I'd found that and much, much more. Combine Rayleigh's information with the "Jienoba" frieze from Wutai and Chaos' cryptic comments, and it implied that Jenova wasn't simply a monster. And just perhaps, that Sephiroth was what Jenova was supposed to be, the undamaged version. 

Four, there had been more than one of whatever Jenova's . . . kind . . . was. _Shenlong. Susano-o._ Maybe even _Chaos_ —that had been implied in some of what it had told me. And that would imply . . . _that_ would imply . . . that Jenova . . . was . . . well. Was whatever Chaos was, which remained a mystery to me. I remembered Lucrecia showing me once, long ago, a flask of tainted red-black mako and a softly glowing materia. Both of which were inside my body now. 

_A materia caught in the process of forming, without any particular purpose imprinted into it yet._ That was what she had told me, all those years ago. Left to stew for long enough, I assumed it would have turned red, like the mako in the flask. 

If the mako that had been intended to comprise part of the materia was in my system, did that mean my entire body was, in some sense, a Summon materia? That . . . made an odd kind of sense, really. 

I shook my head. Something was still not quite right. The materia aspect of the matter implied that Chaos was something like a Summon. At the same time, Sephiroth was clearly _not_ a Summon. Therefore, one or the other was clearly _not_ the same type of creature that Jenova was. Either one of the links in my chain of conjectures was broken—quite possible—or there was another piece missing. Still. 

I suddenly wished I had Lucrecia's notes, but they hadn't been found, either here or in our quick search of the Nibelheim lab. Quite possibly Hojo had had them destroyed. 

Wait. _Wait._ Lucrecia's early work on Chaos had been done in cooperation with my father, and _his_ notes . . . Well, I couldn't be certain they still existed, but I knew where to begin tracing them, and unless something had happened while I'd been asleep in my coffin, Hojo had never touched them. 

I sent an email to Rayleigh Pruitt: _I understand my personal effects were sent to your mother when I was reported dead. They should have included the keys to a storage unit located in the Midgar slums. I need to trace either the keys or the contents of the unit, if it was emptied._ Everything of my father's that I'd inherited and had no immediate use for had ended up there, including his papers. And, with far too much money on my hands and a volatile job that made it difficult to pay a monthly bill on time, I'd struck a special deal with the owner to pay for fifty years in advance. I'd meant to sift through the stuff someday, but I'd ended up in Nibelheim before that day had ever come. 

Hopefully either the storage place was still in business and we could find the keys, or Anna had taken the stuff back to the farm and stored it somewhere. I just hoped I didn't need to meet with her to get it. I didn't need an extra variable to juggle right now. 

And in the meanwhile . . . I was going to use my privileges as a SOLDIER First to get a private room. Since masturbation was going to have to become part of my routine now if I wanted to be certain I wouldn't slip up and dump my own emotional state on someone who had enough problems of his own. 

His hair had been like silk against the bare skin of my arm . . .


	40. Chapter 40

**Zack**

Taking Cloud out to celebrate was going to become a Thursday night routine if his milestones kept coming so close together. Not that it was something I couldn't get used to. And his new sword and first solo mission as a SOLDIER were both worth celebrating. Tifa seemed to think so too, because she kept congratulating him. And she'd hit a milestone of her own. Somehow, she'd persuaded Tseng to issue her a Titan Bangle with Restore and Seal materia, plus a pair of fighting gloves from the Turk armoury that were ten times better than the ones she'd brought with her from Nibelheim. As far as I could tell, anyway. I'd never worn more than my ordinary gloves for punching things out. 

She also kept making poor Spiky blush, which was really cute. It was hard work not to laugh at them, though. A couple of times, Aerith couldn't control herself, and started giggling. As for me, um, well . . . it was more than a couple of times, I guess. I just couldn't help it. I figured paying for everyone's dinner would make up for it. I was pretty sure Cloud and Tifa had never had authentic Costan food before, and it was a pretty fancy restaurant for the slums. We had the passes to get everyone up past the Plate, actually (and if that didn't work, well, we had a Rude sitting at the bar not ten feet away), but the open sky made Aerith nervous. We were going to have to work on that sometime, but not tonight. And besides, a Plate-side restaurant would have been twice as expensive for food not half as good. I didn't mind paying extra, but I _did_ mind not getting what I paid for. 

So we did dinner, and then saw Cloud and Tifa off to take in a movie. Aerith and I would have gone too, but I had to be back at the Tower by midnight—General's orders—and I wanted to have some quality time with my girlfriend before I had to catch the train. 

Rude trailed us at what Tseng probably would have called "a discreet distance" as we made our way back to the church, which was private, but not _so_ private that it bothered Aerith' mom when the two of us went there together. A good place for a talk, anyway. 

"Cloud looks really happy," she said as we settled on one of the benches near the front. 

I grinned. "Yeah, I think our li'l Spiky's found his place in life. He's thriving, even though Seph's making him do that awful spell exercise with the apples that I never could get the hang of." Angeal had ended up making a lot of applesauce during the two weeks I'd tried. "Tifa looks like she's doing well too. They're both good kids." 

"Cloud's only a year younger than I am, you know," Aerith said, leaning back into the arm that I'd snuck between her and the seat. "And Tifa's just a year younger than that. If they're kids, then we are, too." 

"I guess I just feel old these days. Too many monsters, not enough people. We need a dozen more Firsts to take the pressure off, but I'm pretty sure we're a year away from getting even one. In the meanwhile, we've got Seph and me and a guy who used to be a _Turk_ , of all things, running around trying to keep the lid on. And there's the Hojo stuff. And . . ." I didn't have to say it, thankfully. Just touching the Buster Sword told Aerith exactly what I meant, even though she had never met Angeal. "And the _paperwork_ just doesn't go away!" I finished, looking up at the ceiling like I was expecting to get some kind of divine revelation from it and making Aerith giggle. 

"Can't you find anyone to give the paperwork to?" 

I shook my head. "Same problem: not enough officers. Too many of them deserted with Genesis." The thing about Genesis, if you weren't right up close to him all the time, was that he could be _charming_ , not just charismatic. People held Seph in awe, but they _liked_ Genesis, and that seemed to have tipped the scales in a lot of cases. "And setting up promotion exams takes more paperwork. It's like they want to bury us or something." I gave the ceiling my best puppy-eyed look. Not that it could do anything to help me. "But I don't want to spend all our time talking about work—that's too much like an old married couple! And I might not have another chance to catch up with you for a while if Seph has to send me running all over the place again. So you've gotta tell me how the flower cart's working out for you, and stuff." 

Aerith had the most beautiful smile. I'd fallen in love with that smile the first moment I'd seen it. And her eyes, and her voice, and the hands that were surprisingly strong from gardening and wielding her staff, and . . . everything about her, really. She was just that kind of person. 

"First, can I have a kiss?" she asked. 

"Only if I can too." 

We turned toward each other, and she put her arms around my neck and I put mine on her shoulders and . . . _mmm_. 

"You taste like that fancy Costan dessert with the pistachios," I said when we broke apart again, and she laughed and swatted my arm. I wished we were somewhere without an audience. I mean, we'd only been able to really _be_ together a couple of times, since up until recently I couldn't take her to my place, and as for hers . . . well, knowing your girlfriend's _mother_ might come through the door at any moment is kind of . . . deflating, y'know? I'd had to rent hotel rooms so that we could have some real alone time. I'd even been thinking about getting a second apartment in one of the better parts of the Slums, but that had been on hold since Nibelheim. _Most_ of my personal life had been on hold since Nibelheim. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd seen Kunsel—no, that was right, it had been the Night of the Chocobo Pajamas. I hadn't even had a chance to tease him about that yet! But being Seph's second and half a mentor to Cloud and out on constant stupid monster missions was really eating into my time. Even with Seph doing the best he could to make sure I got enough downtime. 

"You're thinking about work again," Aerith said. 

"Guess that proves it's eating my life," I said, snuggling closer to her again. "I dunno. Maybe I should just retire, and we could set up a really _big_ garden somewhere, and start supplying florists all over the continent." 

"You don't know the first thing about growing flowers." 

"I could learn. Or maybe be your house-husband and look after the kids while you handle the business." That . . . didn't sound half-bad, actually. A peaceful life. Where I didn't have to kill anyone else that I loved, never-ever-ever. But . . . 

"You'd be bored silly in less than three days," Aerith said. "I know you, Zack. You're the kind of person who has to always be doing something, even if it's just swatting hedgehog pies. Besides, you wouldn't abandon them." 

"Them who?" 

"General Sephiroth, and Cloud and Vincent and Nanaki and . . . everyone. All the people who need your help. You told me once that that was why you joined SOLDIER, right? To be a hero and help people?" 

"And to get out of Gongaga," I admitted. Okay, so going back for a day hadn't been so bad, but I wouldn't have wanted to live there again. Even with Aerith. 

"Do you—" Aerith began, but she was interrupted by an odd humming noise before she could finish, and something green began to glow from the middle of the patch of flowers at the front of the church. I reached for the Buster Sword, and I heard Rude pull his gun, but all Aerith did was slowly get to her feet. 

I grabbed her shoulder with my free hand. "Wait—we don't know what's going on here." 

"It's the Planet," she said. "It's saying . . . _take_. And _give_. And I have no idea what it means. If I get a little closer, then maybe . . ." 

A column of light shot up from the floor, maybe as thick around as my neck. And I pulled her back. "That looks like mako to me. You could get poisoned." 

Aerith shook her head. "It won't hurt me. But I can't prove it. You're just going to have to trust me, Zack." 

In some ways, I think those words are the most difficult ones someone you love can say to you. Because they mean you have to keep the fear bottled up, or risk your relationship falling apart. 

"Can I go on record as saying that I hate this creepy Cetra stuff?" I asked, letting go of her. 

"I hate it too, sometimes," she said, and grabbed my hand. "Just because I need to go up there doesn't mean I need to go alone, thankfully." She smiled, before turning and tugging me gently forward. I hefted the Buster Sword and propped it against my shoulder, hoping I didn't look too ridiculous. 

The column of green light didn't look any more normal, or any less mako-coloured, from an arm's length away. Fortunately, Aerith didn't seem to want to get any closer. Instead, she dropped to her knees, clasped her hands, and bowed her head, like she was praying or something. 

Everything stayed like that, green column and all, for several minutes. I ended up putting the Buster Sword back on my back, and Rude seemed like he'd gone back to guarding the door. 

Then the light went out just as suddenly as it had shown up in the first place, and something fell to the ground with a crystalline chime. A materia, but this wasn't like any I'd ever seen before. I mean, they come in five colours, right? Yellow, green, blue, purple, and red. The one Aerith carried with her all the time was weird because it looked white. And the one in front of me was transparent, as far as I could tell, which was twice as weird. The only reason I knew it wasn't just a marble was that it was glowing inside. Well, okay, and it had fallen out of the creepy green column of Lifestream that had popped up in the middle of the flowers. 

Aerith reached out to pick it up, and I had to clench both hands into fists to keep from stopping her, telling myself that materia didn't go off just from being handled. 

"So that covers the 'take' part," I said. "Or is it the 'give'?" 

"The 'take'. I'm supposed to give this to someone else." 

"Who?" 

"General Sephiroth." 

I blinked. "Whoa, there. I feel like I'm missing an in-between part." 

She gave me a rueful smile. "I think I am, too. The Planet hasn't screamed at me again, but everything feels worse than when it did. It's made some kind of decision, but I can't understand what. All I keep getting are pictures of monsters and fire and explosions and bleeding skies. I haven't been sleeping well lately. I wish . . . do you think there's any chance we could actually go to Cosmo Canyon? If they know even a little more, maybe they could teach me enough to make sense out of all this . . ." 

"We can always ask," I said. "I mean, you have a delivery to make, right?" 

Aerith giggled, but she also gave the materia in her hands a thoughtful look. "Guess I do. Do you think it would bother him if we went up there tonight?" 

"Seph? Nah, knowing him, he's either reading or doing paperwork. Or plotting world conquest with Vince or whatever it is the two of them do when they're alone in his office. He usually turns in around midnight. Can I have a look at that thing first, though? It would be really bad if it turned out to be explosive or something. You can get a really long jail term for assaulting a Shinra official." 

"I don't think it's that kind of materia." 

"So you don't know what it does either." I popped the All out of my bracer and tried to equip the mystery materia, but it wouldn't let me. And it wasn't just a screw-up on my part. I felt it vibrate and push back against my hand. Eventually I gave up and put the All back. "That's weird." Mind you, Seph didn't absolutely have to equip materia before he used them. I'd seen him fire off spells just holding one in his hand, although he'd told me once that it was a lot harder. Maybe that was why this one was supposed to go to him, though. The only other person I'd ever seen pull the unequipped-cast trick was Genesis, a long time ago in Wutai. "I guess we have to take it Plate-side if we want to find out anything more." 

Rude followed us to the train station. And onto the last car of the train. Which meant that everyone else left us alone. Well, actually, they acted like we had a contagious skin disease. Turk disease? Whatever. Normally I didn't like it much, but tonight it was convenient. 

The paperwork for Aerith' ID had been finalized a few days ago, so she was able to just swipe a card and walk out through the exit like any normal person who had business up here. Except that she stopped right inside the doors. 

"It's still a bit scary," she said quietly. 

"The sky?" 

"Mm-hm." 

"Don't worry," I said, putting my arm around her shoulders. "I won't let it get you." 

"I know you won't." 

At the tower, I waved to the night staff at the front desk and led Aerith to the elevator, with Rude still following along behind. I was kind of relieved when he got off at the thirteenth floor, vanishing back into Turk territory. He probably needed to make a report. 

The lights were low on the fiftieth floor. Well, it was after ten at night. Not many people were crazy enough to work that late. 

Seph was being one of them once more, though, I discovered as I let us into the outer office. The inner office door was closed, and I could hear voices, although not clearly. 

Since I wasn't alone, I knocked for once. "Seph?" 

"Come in, Zack." 

It was Vincent who was with him. Of course. They had a bunch of big print-outs of maps spread out on Seph's desk, and it looked like they'd both been scribbling on them. 

"What's all that?" I asked. 

"Plans of attack," Seph said. "We believe we know where Hojo is, and I don't want him to slip away again. Miss Gainsborough, I trust you know not to repeat that information to anyone." 

"Of course, General." 

They were both being hopelessly stuffy, but I didn't even want to try to do anything about that right now. 

"Is one of you going to tell us why you're here?" Vince prompted. 

Aerith fumbled the materia out of her pocket. "General, the Planet asked me to give this to you." 

"And no, we haven't got any idea why it wants you to have it, or even what it is, really," I said, rubbing the back of my head. "I tried to equip it, but it wouldn't let me." 

Vince frowned. "Protomateria?" 

Seph shot him a look. "Dangerous?" 

"No, just odd." 

Sephiroth took it and lifted it closer to his face for a better look. "There doesn't seem to be any kind of spell or power in this." 

"A protomateria is essentially a blank materia," Vincent said. "Assuming this is the same as the other one." 

Seph's eyes narrowed as he stared at the thing. "So it's useless." 

"Not . . . entirely," Vincent said slowly. "I regret now that I wasn't more interested in Lucrecia's work. She was studying the first protomateria. Among other things." 

"Wait a sec," I said. "She was a scientist, right? She must have taken notes." 

"She did, but I've been unable to find them. They weren't in the archives on the lab floors. I expect Hojo had them destroyed. The notes of one of her early collaborators may yet exist, though—I should know one way or the other in a few days." 

"They could still be in Nibelheim," Sephiroth said slowly. "We didn't take the time to check every notebook and folder of papers on the building. Or they could be on the computer system—I remember seeing at least one terminal of some sort. Information on obscure materia doesn't seem like something Hojo would have tampered with. We can send someone to strip the contents of the house, I suppose." 

"Doesn't sound like it could hurt," I said. "Um, speaking of people going someplace, Aerith _really_ wants to go to Cosmo Canyon." 

"After we deal with Hojo," Seph said— _the General_ said. I could tell. "As far as we know, you are the last of your kind, Miss Gainsborough. We cannot put you at risk." 

Aerith raised her chin. "I won't be kept in Midgar like a prisoner, General." 

"And if you depart on your own, we won't stop you," Seph said, although he didn't sound happy about it. "But I can't spare Zack to go with you until after we're finished with this." He motioned at the maps on his desk. "If you want our assistance, I'm afraid you'll have to put up with our restrictions." 

"I understand." Aerith smiled. "And I suppose having Shinra pay for the trip isn't such a bad bargain. I make enough money to get by, but not enough to pay for a vacation on the Western Continent." 

"You could always charge for the delivery service," I said, nodding in Seph's direction. "Bringing something up from the slums to the fiftieth floor of the Shinra Building must be at least half a mile, vertically. You'd think the Planet could have made better arrangements." 

"Zack, can you imagine what kind of mess a column of mako half a mile tall would make?" Aerith said, mock-serious. "Anyway, we shouldn't keep them from their planning any longer. If you're going somewhere dangerous again soon, I want you all to myself for the rest of the evening." 

I wasn't going to complain. I let her take my hand and pull me out of the office. I closed the door behind me. If Seph was doing planning at this hour, that meant he'd already confirmed things with the higher-ups, and we'd be leaving for wherever-that-was-a-map-of in the morning. 

_Off to kill tentacle-Hojo. Sounds like fun, right?_ At least there wouldn't be any civilians in the way this time. Except maybe Rufus. 

_I just want all this to be over,_ I realized. A life of routine monster exterminations was sounding like a very good idea right now.


	41. Chapter 41

**Rufus**

I clung to my name with everything I had as I drifted back up out of the blackness. _Rufus Shinra. Rufus Shinra._ To my name, and to awareness. I wasn't going to zone out again, no matter what Hojo dosed me with. 

I also clung to the memory of the fight in my father's office. It hadn't been quite as bad as it had looked, I didn't think. Tseng had been hurt, but he'd had the bleeding under control, and I remembered Sephiroth hitting the top of the stairs just as Hojo jumped off the tower with me. I might hate the green-eyed bastard, but he took his duties seriously. Rescuing the Vice-President of the corporation he worked for should be one of those duties. And if he didn't come, the Turks would. 

I wasn't sure what the other monster involved in the fight had been, or where it had come from. Escaped from the lab, maybe. As far as I was concerned right now, though, anything that hated Hojo was a potential ally. 

And I would even have kissed Sephiroth's too-pale ass if I'd thought it would get me out of this _tank_. I was pretty sure now that that was what I was in: a mako tank, of the type they'd used experimentally on SOLDIERs until Hojo had come to the conclusion that injecting the mako allowed for a much more controlled dosage. The liquid I was floating in contained some mako, but not too much, judging from the colour and the fact that my skin only stung when I tried to move and exposed some tiny bit of it that had been protected before. 

There was someone in the room outside the tank, but I couldn't tell who it was—Hojo or the man I now recognized as Genesis Rhapsodos, although he was in terrible shape—without opening my eyes further and letting whoever-it-was know that I was awake. Genesis might have let that pass, but Hojo wouldn't. He wanted me out cold, at his mercy, and going slightly crazy, as far as I could tell. 

Or completely crazy. Sephiroth clones . . . overwriting people's memories . . . That had to be nonsense, didn't it? But that made it twice as important not to lose sight of myself. _Rufus Shinra._ Not Sephiroth in any way. It was bad enough that, since I'd been soaking in mako solution for however long, I was already going to come out of this with some enhancements I'd never asked for and didn't really want. 

I heard something heavy being dragged along the floor, and the door opening, but forced myself to give no sign that I'd noticed. This was a lot harder than keeping a poker face during a meeting with some idiot of a supplier. 

"That is _all_ you found?" Hojo asked. He didn't sound happy. 

"This is all there was," Genesis replied. "And if I'd known you were going to send me grave-robbing, I would have stayed here." 

"If you think this is a coffin, then the liberal arts have rotted your brain even more than I thought." 

"A box seven feet by four feet by a bit less than two feet, with a window in the front of it showing what appears to be a fresh corpse, is something that any sane person would interpret as a coffin until given some reason to do otherwise. Even if it has blinking lights along one side and fell from the heavens to produce a good-sized crater." 

"It isn't a corpse, you fool. As you would realize if you had ever learned to read the Cetra language. This is a form of suspended-animation device, and the indicators suggest that your 'corpse' is alive and quite viable. We only need to let him out." 

"And what happens then? Not that I don't appreciate your eagerness to get things done—when they actually _interest_ you, unlike the task of whipping up a possible cure for my own sad state—but we have no idea who this person is, only that he arrived here in answer to a two-thousand-year-old beacon." 

"If we don't release him, we will never know. If you wish to leave before I do so, you know where the exits are." 

With them both preoccupied, I risked opening my eyes a bit wider. That had to be the not-a-coffin, rectangular, metallic, and covered with strange designs that I couldn't make out through the distortion caused by the mako solution and the curving wall of the tank. There was what might be a clear window in the top surface, but I couldn't see what was inside from this angle. Presumably something that looked like a male human being. 

Hojo was bent over it now, stroking it as though he thought it was a cat, or maybe a new piece of lab equipment. Kind of disgusting, but I took it in anyway. You never knew when some trivial detail might turn out to be important. That was something Tseng and I agreed on, although we used the idea in different ways. 

_Tseng, you'd damned well better be all right._ The stiff-necked Turk had always been the closest thing I had to a friend. 

There was a loud _thunk_ from outside the mako tube, and the lid of the coffin . . . well, it looked to me like it evaporated. It seemed like a ridiculous way of unsealing a container to me, but I wasn't a Cetra. Or whatever was inside that box. 

A hand shot up out of the coffin and grabbed Hojo by the face. I forced myself not to smile. And anyway, it let go again without doing any real damage that I could see. Then a figure heaved itself to a standing position inside the box. About the same height as Genesis, but broader, skin tone medium-dark, and while it was once again difficult to tell through the distortion of the tank, I thought its hair might be blue. And wearing . . . a dress? I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from snickering. 

Genesis was pointing his beloved Rapier at the stranger. "Who are you?" 

"You may call me Susano-o. Where is our sister?" 

"I doubt there's a woman of any sort within a twenty-mile radius." 

"He means _Jenova_ , as you would have discerned if you weren't an inferior specimen whose brains are in the process of decomposing." Hojo seemed to be having a hard time straightening his glasses. Maybe Susano-o had bent the frames. If so, it served him right. "Unfortunately, she has been destroyed. Only a few sample tissue cultures remain." 

"We never did expect to see her alive again," Susano-o said. "She knew what risks were inherent in her mission. Nevertheless, it is . . . a disappointment. Now. You must provide me with a host for Shenlong." 

"Shenlong?" Genesis had lowered Rapier, but not put it away yet. 

Susano-o opened his left hand, the one he hadn't used on Hojo. Nestled in his palm was . . . a materia? A good-sized one, too. Mastered, I would have bet. Since it looked brown to me, it was probably a Summon. "His body was destroyed ere we fled, and I doubt we have the necessary time to waste on a full incubation process." 

Hojo was smiling. That was usually a bad sign. "Do you have any particular requirements for a body?" 

"Healthy enough to survive the shock. Ideally, young and male, although necessity may overturn that." 

"Hmm. Well, I believe we have someone handy who fits all of your requirements. Healthy, young, male . . . and, ultimately, disposable." 

He was looking at me, the bastard. 

"What procedure do we need to follow?" Hojo continued. "I must admit that this is opening up possibilities that I had never considered before." 

"It would be best if we could get him to directly equip the materia. Into his flesh," Susano-o amplified. "Failing that, the materia must be implanted into the body of the host. A central position near the spine is preferred, but anywhere is acceptable as long as it does not interfere with the body's functions. The host must remain conscious during the process, or there is a possibility of serious damage." 

"Very well. Give me a moment to ensure that he is conscious, and to administer something to keep him that way. And a paralytic. Then we will implant your materia . . . I believe the optimum position would be behind the cardiac muscle." Hojo fingered his chin thoughtfully, while I fought to get my hands on the buckles of the harness that was holding me suspended inside the tank. This time, I managed to get one of them undone and pull some of the tubes out of my arms. I knew it was useless, knew Genesis would have no trouble taking me even if I did manage to get loose, but even though I wasn't a hundred percent sure about what having that materia stuffed inside my chest would mean, I knew it wouldn't end up being good for Rufus Shinra. 

Behind and above me, Hojo clicked his tongue, and ice shot along my still-pinioned arm, radiating from a tube I hadn't yet removed. _Move, damn you,_ I commanded that arm, but it only twitched weakly. 

A few minutes later, the harness came apart and the mako began to drain from the tank, but I couldn't do anything more than fall to my knees and cough up green liquid. I was probably lucky I could even do that. My limbs felt much too heavy, I was cold from the drugs and from the mako solution evaporating from my skin, and if I'd fallen over with my head tilted back instead of bowed, I probably would have choked. 

Hojo hauled me bodily from the tube after a while, dragged me over to a metal table, and manhandled me up, muttering all the while about the shortage of lab assistants in such a rural area. I was surprised the scrawny bastard was strong enough to lift me. I tried to fight as he strapped me down, but by then I was too far gone even to twitch. I could barely blink. 

I wanted to close my eyes as Hojo started to lay out his surgical kit, but forced my eyes to stay open instead and take in all the trivial details, even though I might never have a chance to use them. I imprinted the appearance of every scalpel and saw (I didn't want to think about what he meant to use _that_ for) and pair of tweezers on my brain. So clearly that I recognized the first tool he picked up as also being the first one he'd laid out. 

Having my chest cut open wasn't as bad at first as I had expected. It hurt, of course, but the pain was unexpectedly manageable. Until Hojo picked up the saw and began to work on my ribcage. 

I wanted to faint. Or to die. But somehow I didn't think I was going to be allowed to do either. I couldn't even throw up as I saw Hojo gently lift my still-beating heart out of the way with one of his instruments, and hold out his hand for the Shenlong materia. He set the cold, hard thing inside my chest and lowered my heart back down and— 

Everything came apart. The room shattered into fragments of disconnected noise and images, and something slithered behind/above/underneath/through me, drawing the pieces back together in a different pattern, combined with others that had nothing to do with the world I knew. 

— _"Oh,_ perfect _," I sneered. "Now that your ideals have already killed so many, you intend one last push to wipe the soul-deaf, the_ humans _as they're calling themselves now, away entirely? What have they ever done to you? Taken a few drops of power from the Lifestream to keep their children from freezing or starving or dying of disease?"_ — 

— _"There is nothing here, either," he said, my dear friend, glaring at the screen that showed only a globe of barren rock. We had had such high hopes when we had left together, we three and a handful of Cetra and many hundred humans. We had thought it would be easy to find somewhere else to belong, somewhere that we could create a new civilization with different rules. But each sun we had seen had nothing to its name but more empty rocks. There was only one Lifestream, and we had left it behind._

_"We have to go back." The words tasted bitter, so very bitter as I spoke them, and beside me, Jenova wept.—_

— _"The virus is complete," she said softly, shaking her head so that her silver hair cascaded down her back. "One of us must carry it back to the surface if it is to be of any use. And as I am the leader, I choose myself. I will take a beacon if you wish, but there will be no returning from this once the virus starts to erode my core. I'll use an asteroid as a shield to make certain they can't take me out before I'm in a position to pass on our little gift. I will free the humans. It's all we can do now."_ — 

— _As the beam of power and the mass of flying debris shot up from the world below, I pushed Susano-o through the door, knowing that there was only time to save one of us. The hole in the ship made all the air rush out, and even the rapid healing of the flesh I wore could not compensate for the way it was being exploded outward from within. If this was the last time I lost awareness . . . well, I had done my best, but I was still angry. We had won, in a sense, but it was a pyrrhic victory indeed._ — 

I was still lying on the metal table as reality snapped back together, but I knew that a fundamental transformation had taken place, and I was no longer as I had been. 

"Shenlong, are you . . . ?" 

"I'm fine, old friend," I said, forcing a smile as I sent a pulse of curative magic through my body, healing the surgical wound that Hojo had been about to suture. Susano-o looked very worn. "Untie me, and then you can rest." 

Shenlong. Rufus Shinra. 

Two names, but one soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life as a simple Sephiroth clone would have been too easy for Rufus. ;P
> 
> (We'll see whether or not there's a mass exodus of readers after this chapter.)


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor warning for Scarlet/non-consensual touching.

**Sephiroth**

I arrived at my office at seven o'clock that morning to find Scarlet waiting outside the door. I had never seen her awake so early before. 

"General," she greeted me as I unlocked the door and let myself inside. 

"Director Scarlet." I acknowledged her because I must—being temporarily part of the Board of Directors made me her equal at best, not her superior—but I had no intention of encouraging her in whatever she thought she was doing. I had no time to waste on her in any case—now that the plans for the anti-Hojo mission had been finalized, I needed to get a large number of things and people loaded onto aircraft for the trip out, ideally before noon. 

"I couldn't let you leave without saying good-bye." 

I didn't bother to point out that I had been in Mideel mere days ago, and she hadn't bothered with this nonsense then—indeed, I doubt she had even been paying enough attention to realize I was gone. "And?" 

Scarlet was a far worse opponent than any I had ever faced in Wutai. 

"Oh, please. You can't be that frigid, surely." Her hand . . . slithered . . . down my arm. The instant need to wash was psychosomatic, but powerful, and made it difficult to hold still. Once again, though, there was no non-obvious way to dodge her touch, which meant I had to force myself to freeze and hold. 

_No worse than the labs,_ I told myself, as Scarlet, apparently emboldened by my lack of resistance, placed her hand on the patch of bare chest revealed by my coat. And yet somehow it _was_ worse than anything the scientists had ever done to me. They had certainly touched me in ways I would have preferred not to be touched, but they had done so in a businesslike manner. Scarlet was trying to elicit an emotional response. To make me give something of myself. And that felt worse than all the needles and torturous tests. 

I did allow myself to turn subtly as she pressed herself up against me, so that her lower body engaged with my thigh and hip rather than my crotch. She seemed content with that for a moment, but then she began to reach, and in a few seconds, I would have no choice except to— 

"Pardon the interruption, Director Scarlet, but General Sephiroth and I have business." 

_Vincent._ I hadn't heard him approach, but I had been somewhat preoccupied. And although it would have been melodramatic to say that it felt as though salvation was standing there only a few feet from me, that was as close as I could come to describing my emotional reaction. 

"Then I suppose Sephy and I can resume this later. Be careful down south, darling." She ran a finger down the side of my face, then turned and began to walk away, exaggerating the sway of her hips. 

I nodded to Vincent. _Thank you._ He shrugged slightly in return— _don't mention it_ —and followed me into my office. He waited until there were two doors closed between us and the hallway before asking, "Are you all right?" 

"Merely disgusted," I said, placing Masamune on her stand. "This . . . she attempted to pursue me once before, shortly after I returned from Wutai to be crowned with the title of _hero_ by Shinra's publicity department, but she is being far more physically intense this time. I only hope she never tries anything in front of Zack. He would never understand why I choose not to report it." The degree to which my reputation would be damaged by bringing a _sexual harassment_ suit, of all things, against another Shinra executive . . . was difficult to quantify, but I was certain it wouldn't escape unscathed. 

"Zack is still naive enough to believe there are depths to which people won't stoop," Vincent agreed. "Does she have any kind of hold on you?" 

"Not at the moment, but if she pushes things far enough to discover that I'm impotent, it may become a problem." 

Vincent . . . twitched. "You're . . ." 

"Incapable of sustaining an erection long enough for intercourse and orgasm, even with chemical stimulation, to Hojo's intense frustration." Odd that _this_ , of all things, seemed to bother the ex-Turk more than anything else I had ever said in his presence. "Since he couldn't find anything physically wrong, it's presumably either psychological or an unanticipated side effect of my warped genetics. At least it thwarted his plans to breed me like a cock chocobo." A thought even more disgusting than the feel of Scarlet's hands on me. I might have only the weakest grasp on the concept of family or normal parent-child relations, but the thought of allowing anyone who was supposed to be under my protection to be subjected to Hojo's tender mercies woke a cold flame of anger in me. "I have never found myself particularly distressed by my inability, odd though that may seem. The attempt to seek out a relationship, or even just simple desire . . . they would be unnecessary complications in the life I have been forced to lead." 

A long pause. "Why tell me this now?" 

"Because it's the last secret of any significance that I haven't told you." _Because I find myself becoming ever more strongly attached to you, and I find I want you to know, to learn these things from me before someone else can surprise you with them._

"I still have a number of my own that I haven't told you." 

I raised an eyebrow. "Are they likely to be a danger to us?" 

Vincent visibly stopped and thought for a moment. "No. Although I can't rule out the possibility of someone's children or grandchildren holding a grudge." 

"We'll address that if it ever happens. Otherwise, nothing in that category matters." 

"Does anyone except the two of us know about _your_ secret?" 

I shrugged. "Hojo, obviously. He didn't take any notes on the subject, since he had no wish for anyone to find out that I was less than perfect in any way, but Dr. Rayleigh indicated yesterday that she had recognized the pattern in the gaps, so to speak. You are the only person I've ever told myself." I had never been on quite _that_ intimate a basis with Zack, or even Genesis or Angeal. Not to mention that they would all have taken it badly. "None of the . . . additional research subjects . . . Hojo attempted to get me to engage with was ever involved in more than one session, so they would have had no way of knowing that my dysfunction was systemic. Assuming that any of them is even still alive." 

Vincent put his hand on my arm. Odd how his touch seemed to chase a bit of that slimy, unwashed feeling away. "If it looks like Scarlet's managed to get too close, I'll deal with her," he said. There was no question of what he meant by _deal with_. The look in his eyes was hard, cold, and very Turk-like. "Shooting her should make it clear that you weren't responsible for her death." And very, very softly, but in an absolutely deadly tone, "She has no right. I will not add another sin to my conscience by leaving my partner undefended." 

I put my hand over his. I wasn't even sure why I did it, only that I wanted him to stay there for a little while longer. _Partner._ I did have some concept of what the word meant to a Turk, and for Vincent to use it in reference to me was . . . astonishing. But perhaps it shouldn't have been. _You've known what direction we were moving in for a while now, haven't you? Since long before I became conscious of it._

It took nearly four hours to round up a hundred and twenty men, plus weapons, transport, provisions, and all the rest, and get everything and everyone transported to the airfield and loaded aboard several planes small enough to land at the Mideel airport, which only had a five-thousand-foot runway. The last necessities to be loaded aboard were our First Class SOLDIERs, and I was the last to toss my bag into the luggage bin, secure my sword, and take my seat, at the very front of the plane, beside Vincent and across the aisle from Zack, who was craning his neck and looking around as the plane began to taxi. 

"Hey, I don't see Spiky here—did we leave him behind?" 

I shook my head. "I had a different mission I wanted him on." Less dangerous than this one. I was being careful of Strife until he was fully enhanced—he had enough potential that I didn't want to see him vanish down a monster's throat. 

"So what's the plan? You said you would be briefing us on the way." 

"After takeoff, but the basic concept is one of encirclement. Then we send a small force in for the kill." Thankfully, we knew where all the entrances to the mine works were, so it was possible to station as many people as we wanted outside them—we'd put the Seconds and some of the better Thirds there. And the other Thirds would form an outer ring to keep anyone from escaping unnoticed. And the strike force would be, naturally, the three of us. 

In some ways, I wished we had had a little more time. I knew I could coordinate well enough with both Zack and Vincent individually, but the three of us had never fought together as a team. However, they were both experienced professionals. They weren't about to make fools of themselves. 

I trusted them. Both. 

It was a six-hour flight from Midgar to Mideel, and lunch was ration bars. I tuned out Zack's ridiculous remarks about the proportion of ground-up rats to other ingredients as I ate. Truth be told, I had grown up eating the prototype versions of the things, since it was the easiest way for the lab staff to be certain I was getting enough nutrition. The familiarity meant that, for me, they were almost what Zack would have described as "comfort food". And how Zack could complain about ration bars when he could stomach military coffee was beyond me. 

I thought Zack was going to mutiny when he discovered we were having the bars for supper as well, in the back of a truck lumbering along the disused road that had, up until not quite two years ago, led to the village of Banora. The complaints only stopped when Vincent dryly requested permission of me to put Zack in a choke-hold, prompting snickers from the three Second Classes who were sharing the vehicle with us. 

An hour and a half up the rutted road, with the sun low in the sky, we began to see signs of the Turks' attempt to purge Banora from the map—burnt trees, both fallen and still standing, and the foundations of the first few buildings on the outskirts of the village. I ordered the trucks to stop, and had the lower ranks move out. Encirclement first, before anyone even tried to approach the mine works. 

Or at least, that was the plan. Things started to go off-script almost immediately, as they so often do. 

" _General, this is squad six._ " Banora's communications infrastructure had been destroyed in the firebombing, so we were stuck with crackly low-bandwidth local mesh connections between individual PHSs. A mobile comms station would have represented a single point of failure I didn't think we could afford. " _There's a terrain anomaly, sir. A crater. Looks recent. Scorched at the center._ " 

"Deep enough to penetrate the mine works?" I asked, fingering the protomateria where it rested in my pocket. I wasn't even sure why I'd brought the useless thing with me. _A gift from the Planet . . ._ I wondered if, next time, I could get it to send me normal materia. Or perhaps a toaster or some other item with a degree of utility, however limited. 

" _No, sir._ " 

"Ignore it, then." 

" _Yes, sir._ " 

The next report described a pile of skeletons surrounded by feathers. Dead Genesis clones? Well, we knew there had been some in the area, but I was surprised they had survived the firebombing—feathers surely wouldn't have been intact after two years on the ground in the open. It was pitiful, in a way, that they had survived for so long only to succumb to, most likely, the melting disease that had affected the clone Vincent had encountered in Wutai. I still felt it was unfortunate that we didn't know what had caused that. And I once more forced a nightmare image of Genesis with the flesh bubbling off his bones to the back of my mind. We had been friends once, and even though he had betrayed me, I didn't want to see him die such an ugly death. 

" _Squad one, sir. We've met up with squad twelve._ " Which meant that the outer circle of Thirds was complete. 

"Phase Two," I ordered on general broadcast. The sun had disappeared below the horizon, and it was getting dark, but that was—slightly—to our advantage, or I would have postponed this until morning. All the Seconds and Thirds on this mission were experienced SOLDIERs, and comfortable with their night vision. I was betting that Hojo wasn't, if he'd even gained the ability. 

"So it's time for us to get going, right?" Zack stopped doing squats and looked at me. 

"Yes." There was no great hurry, but I wanted to be at our chosen point of entry by the end of Phase Two. 

There were four ways into the mine works that were large enough for an average adult human being to make use of them. Not all of them had been part of the original design—there was one where the ground had fallen in while someone was trying to dig a foundation, and another that was mostly under ten feet of water in a pond. I'd chosen to use the "back door" from the original design, the emergency personnel escape exit. We knew how it related to the rest of the caves, and it was less obvious than the larger main entrance that had been used to move equipment in and chunks of rock out while they'd been digging. It was also closest to the old lab, which was where I expected Hojo would have set himself up. Even if it had been furnished primarily for geology, it would have some basic facilities that he could convert. 

When we found the opening, it had nearly a foot of debris at the bottom. It clearly hadn't been maintained in a long time . . . but that didn't mean it was unused. Recent bootprints marked the fall of loose soil. There was something oddly familiar about them, and I stamped one of my own into the soil beside the clearest one, for comparison purposes. 

"The same kind of boot, but two and a half sizes smaller," Vincent said instantly. 

"Seriously? You can tell down to the _half-size_?" 

I sighed. "That isn't the point, Zack. My boots aren't standard SOLDIER issue, but made to a variant pattern used by myself and one other." 

Zack blinked several times. "Who— _Wait._ It's Genesis, isn't it? The real one. Vince, _please_ tell me that's at least a year old." 

"Not my area of expertise, but I would expect the earth to be either compacted down or blown away if it had been here all that long." 

"Oh, well, that's just great." 

"I can handle Genesis," I said. _And this time, there's nothing that says I have to kill him._ "In fact, if he is down there, I ask that you leave me to fight him alone and pursue Hojo instead. He is the largest danger in all of this." 

Vincent nodded, but Zack . . . "Isn't that risky for you, Seph?" 

I shook my head. "Genesis' ability peaked when we were both still in our mid-teens. Since then, he has not improved, and he ceased to be a serious challenge for me years ago." Even on the day when we'd last sparred and I'd dealt him that wound to the shoulder, Genesis hadn't been able to tell how much I'd been holding back. If it had, it would have enraged him even more than his defeat. 

My PHS crackled. " _This is team D. Phase Two complete._ " 

"Understood," I replied, then switched to broadcast again. "Commencing Phase Three, with the following modification: if Genesis Rhapsodos is sighted within the operation area, avoid engaging him if possible." Then I set the device to silent mode and slid it into my pocket, and glared at Zack until he pulled his own out and adjusted that setting as well. Vincent just turned his PHS off completely. I trusted that if he got separated from us, he would turn it back on, but in the meanwhile it was more important to ensure no one's ringtone erupted at an inopportune moment. 

This would go much better if Hojo couldn't hear us coming. 

I entered the mine with Masamune drawn, and paused at the innermost edge of the faint twilight to orient myself and give Zack and Vincent a moment to close up behind me. We had all studied the map, but Zack's sense of direction was sub-par, and I didn't trust him not to get disoriented down here. 

When we moved forward again, Zack was at my right, while Vincent moved more freely, behind or beside as the geography of the tunnels allowed, covering our flanks and line of retreat. I could only detect his location by the faint smell of gunpowder. Somehow he was able to keep himself from making any sound even I could detect, and he didn't look directly at me until we emerged from the man-made tunnel into a large underground cavern. Near one wall was a large natural materia crystal, and lying near it was one of the largest monsters I had ever seen. 

"What the hell?" Zack whispered. "Please tell me that thing isn't going to wake up and come after us." 

"Not unless the Planet wants it to," Vincent murmured, the red glow of his eyes giving away his location for the first time. "Emerald WEAPON. One of several such creatures that rises to defend the Lifestream under extreme conditions. I doubt even Hojo could awaken it for any other purpose." 

I would have to ask him how he knew about it, after this operation was over. _One of several . . ._ We might yet find ourselves fighting them. Unless the protomateria in my pocket represented some attempt by the Lifestream to tell us that it was trying to find another way. 

The old Shinra facilities were on the far side of the cavern from where we had entered it. Some alcoves and individual small caves had bars across them, although I couldn't tell whether the intent had been to create a prison or a zoo. They were all empty now. An old administrative area held three desks and a rusty filing cabinet with empty drawers hanging out of it. There had, I thought, been a fourth desk once, but it appeared someone had moved it quite some time ago. Unlike the cavern below the Nibelheim mansion, there was little dust here. Perhaps it was due to the humidity. 

The faint smell of disinfectant and mako alerted me that we were getting closer to the labs. A few moments later, I spotted light spilling out from under a door—the first intact door we had found. The knob wouldn't turn when I tried it, so I cut it out of the way and strode forward over the remains. 

"You never did get over that bad habit of yours, did you?" Genesis asked, smiling.


	43. Chapter 43

**Cloud**

I'd never expected I'd be coming back here again so soon. Maybe fate just liked to mess with me. So I was sitting in the back of another truck winding its way up into the mountains and hoping we wouldn't have a dragon jump out at us like the one that had killed our driver during the last trip, because there was no Sephiroth here this time to take care of it. In fact, the person in charge of _this_ trip to Nibelheim was . . . me. 

I'd somehow managed to keep from fainting when General Sephiroth had told me what he was assigning me to do. And I'd spat Cid-Highwind-like words at Zack when he'd congratulated me . . . and mentioned something really scary. 

_Y'know, Spiky, you have to lead three successful missions, or do something else really spectacular, to qualify for a field promotion to lieutenant, and I don't think Seph wants to send you off to officers' school for a year to get you in the other way._

The idea of becoming an officer had never really crossed my mind . . . but it really was the obvious next step, wasn't it? There was no way the General would be happy with a protege who never rose above the bottom of the ranks. It wouldn't matter to him that all this stuff was coming at me at once. He would already have figured out I was stubborn enough to keep on moving forward. Even when it felt like my brain was going to explode. 

At least I hadn't been sent here alone. Across from me, Arnulf was slouched against the side of the truck, asleep, and Jackson was playing some kind of game on his PHS (although where he'd _gotten_ a game that would run on a military PHS, I wasn't sure—they're pretty locked down). Three SOLDIERs Third Class didn't add up to one First Class, but we'd been all they could spare from Operation Take Down Hojo, as Zack had called it. 

Arnulf and Jackson were okay, and I wished they'd been the only ones along, but it was beneath our dignity as SOLDIERs to clean out the mansion ourselves—"retrieve or copy any and all research notes or other written material in the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim and the attached laboratory, including anything stored in digital information systems", the orders said—so we needed porters. Infantry grunts, like I'd been when we'd taken the last trip. In fact, they were the squad I'd belonged to before Sephiroth had taken me into SOLDIER. 

And that was the problem. Because they all hated me. 

It wasn't anything I'd done, really. It was just that I didn't make friends easily, and some of them were jealous that a First Class SOLDIER had gone out of his way to make friends with me, and some of them were just assholes. Plus I'd been the smallest person in the entire company (there had been one girl only half an inch taller, but she was a corporal and built like a tank and no one ever gave her any crap). 

Sergeant Greyson was a professional, at least, so he'd gotten everyone on board the other truck while I pretended to supervise. But when we got down at the other end, I was going to have to take charge somehow. And while I'd had some opportunities to watch while Zack led a squad or three around, there was no way I could imitate what he did without feeling like a total idiot. 

It looked like my mantra for the next few days was going to be "What would Sephiroth do?" The General's leadership style was cool and matter-of-fact and didn't require treating new subordinates like long-lost brothers. (Then again, Zack treated everyone like a long-lost brother.) I just wasn't sure I could pull it off when the people under me didn't respect me to begin with. I hadn't spoken with anyone but the sergeant yet, but it was pretty clear from the looks everyone had given me that they didn't think I deserved to be in SOLDIER. And it wouldn't be easy to prove otherwise to them. 

I would have preferred to be assigned any other squad for this, but I doubted it was a coincidence that I'd been stuck with these guys. It felt like another one of Sephiroth's subtle tests. 

I'd rather have been back in Mideel juggling apples. I'd probably work on that exercise again tonight, after I practiced with Echo. And I had some reading to do too. _Introduction to the Principles of Military Tactics_ was about as much fun as the title made it sound like it would be, but Sephiroth was at least reasonable enough to give me a month to get through the thick book. 

I twisted around in my seat, trying to get a better look out the front window so that I could gauge how far up the mountain we were, since it already felt like we'd been following the switch-backs for hours. I should have been counting the turns, probably, but I was feeling sick enough to wish I could just throw up and get it over with. 

There was a sudden bump, and the sound of the tires changed as the truck moved from the gravel of the road up the mountain to the stone pavement inside the town. A moment later, the driver brought us to a stop. Beside the water tower, if he'd followed directions. 

I pulled Echo from the rack she was secured to, and gripped her hilt tightly as I went to unfasten the doors. _Showtime._ Behind me, Arnulf stretched, and Jackson ended his game in a tinny electronic fanfare. 

Nibelheim hadn't changed, but that didn't mean this felt the same as the last time I'd jumped down from a truck here. It was just that the difference was me. I wasn't going to hide behind a helmet this time. I'd come home as a SOLDIER, just as I'd always meant to do. I had no _reason_ to hide. 

"So what now, boss? The inn?" Jackson asked lazily, and I could have kissed him for reminding me of what I needed to do next. Well, if he'd been a girl, and shorter. 

Okay, so . . . "That's the inn there," I said, pointing. "Arnulf, go check us in and get our keys. They only have two rooms with three beds each, so either people are going to have to share beds or someone's going to have to sleep on the floor. Shared bath, too. After everyone's settled, Jackson and I and Sergeant Greyson are going to go talk to the mayor, just to make sure that the local people are aware of what we're doing. Then we're all free until tomorrow morning." 

"Right," Arnulf said, and vanished through the door of the inn. So far, so good. Maybe if I stuck to business, I could get through this after all. 

" _All right, ladies! Naptime's over, get down here and line up!_ " 

It was an effort to keep from twitching as Sergeant Greyson yelled at the troopers. A month ago, I would have been taking my place at the end of the line. Now . . . _oh, hell, I hope he doesn't want me to inspect them._ That . . . would just be the end. 

Corporal Clark plus eight common troopers plus the sergeant made up exactly one squad, and even though they were wearing helmets, I could identify everyone except the guy who had been transferred in to replace me by their body-shapes. The tall guy with the broad shoulders was Byrd, for instance. The one who'd made me . . . No. I wasn't going to think about it. I pictured Sephiroth in my mind's eye, remembered the way he could keep his face flat and expressionless when discussing the most horrible things, and tried to draw that non-expression over my face as well. 

"All present and accounted for, Soldier Strife." Greyson looked at me expectantly. 

What would Sephiroth do? "Thank you, Sergeant. I'll brief everyone in more detail in the morning, but we're here to secure old research documents from the laboratory at the edge of town. The building's monster-infested, mostly with ghirofelgo, dorky faces, mirages, and black bats. There may be some sahagin in the underground areas. We'll be staying at the inn here tonight, and regrouping here in the front at oh-seven-thirty to head over there. That's all for now." 

"Not bad," Jackson whispered to me, quietly enough that no one without enhanced hearing would have picked it up. Especially over the noise of Greyson herding the infantry grunts inside. 

"Well, at least I managed not to throw up all over my boots," I whispered back. 

Jackson chuckled. "Fake it 'till you make it, Strife. That's just how it goes. Anyway, there any more to this mission than you said there was?" 

I shrugged. "Not really. The building's been abandoned for twenty years, and the lab's only accessible via the second floor, so we're going to have to be careful going in and out, but it isn't exactly dangerous." 

"So if these papers or whatever have been sitting there since before both of us were born, why does Shinra want them so badly all of a sudden?" 

"Not sure." Although I was pretty sure it was _Sephiroth_ who wanted them, and not Shinra generally. "I do know they're looking for the notes of one scientist in particular, a Dr. Crescent." 

"Who?" 

_Sephiroth's mother._ "She used to work with Hojo. She's been dead for a while, though. This was her last posting or something." 

"Oh." 

The inn door opened and shut again. Greyson. And Arnulf. 

"We really have to visit this mayor of yours, son?" Sergeant Greyson was pushing fifty, an old career regular with salt-and-pepper hair. He'd been neither kind nor unkind to me, just . . . professional. Which to him meant turning a blind eye to certain things. 

I seemed to be shrugging a lot these days. "Technically, no—we're just going to be removing Shinra property from a building owned by Shinra, which has nothing to do with anyone living in Nibelheim—but I don't see any reason to be rude. Plus, it's only been a couple of weeks since General Sephiroth dealt with the mess up at the reactor here. The townsfolk might still be a bit . . . touchy." _Oh, and the mayor's daughter ran away to Midgar a couple of days later—did I mention that?_ I scowled. This was going to be a difficult meeting. 

"Ha. Cloud Strife. So it really _is_ you. Too bad. I had a bet on saying you'd run away for good." 

"Brad Carter." I still had to look up to see his face, but he seemed a lot less scary now than he had before I'd left for Midgar. He was still a year older than I was, but he was sure as hell no Sephiroth. Just a porky guy with freckles and hair three shades darker than mine. "Why would I have wanted to stay in a town like this? I only came back for a couple of days because of work." 

"Oh, right, you're a Shinra dog now." 

"Hey, now, don't go confusing SOLDIER with the Turks," I said, and Jackson snickered. "Then again, I don't suppose you know the difference anyway." 

Brad seemed to be fumbling for a response to that. "I can't believe Tifa ran away from home because of a little shit like you. If she's gotten hurt, it's all your fault." 

"Tifa's fine. I took her out to dinner and a movie last night, in Midgar." 

"You little shit!" Brad grabbed me by the collar. He seemed a little surprised when he had a hard time hoisting me off my feet. I might not have gotten much taller since I'd left Nibelheim to join Shinra, but I'd packed on some nice, solid muscle. Channeling my inner Reno, I grinned at the man who had bullied me throughout my childhood, reached up, grabbed his thumb, and bent it the wrong way. 

I'd heard bone crack that way before, but it had always been monster bone, not human. I'd never heard someone scream because of me. I wasn't sure that I liked it. I mean, up until now, this had been playing out like any one of a hundred revenge fantasies I'd had while I was still living in Nibelheim, but . . . well. The physical part of it had happened so easily. There had been no question of Brad really hurting me, really fighting back. Just as there had never really been any chance of my fighting back when I'd been eight and he'd been ten. 

I didn't want to turn into the kind of person I'd always hated. 

Brad was cradling his hand to his chest. I gave him a tired look. "Just go, okay? And keep your hands to yourself from now on. I'm not part of your world anymore. I'm a SOLDIER now. If I hadn't _expected_ you to grab me, you'd be lying on the ground right now with your face smashed in, or maybe with some body parts chopped off, because that's how I'm _trained_ to react to a hostile person coming at me that way. Now, go to the clinic before I kick you down the street and through the door." 

Jackson snorted as we watched him go. "Did you really steal his girl, boss?" 

"Tifa was never his. He tried to ask her out . . . three years ago, now? And she spin-kicked him into the wall of his uncle's shed. Tifa's been studying martial arts since we were little," I added as they started to give me odd looks. "She never wanted to stay in Nibelheim either." 

Sergeant Greyson shook his head. "Kids these days. Can we get on with things now, Soldier Strife?" 

Jackson, at least, stood by me when I had to explain about Tifa again. To her father. Apparently she hadn't bothered to call him, and if she'd written, it hadn't gotten there yet. He was grateful to hear that she was alright, but whatever note Tifa had left behind had apparently mentioned me. By name. She and I were going to have to talk about that when I got back to Midgar. 

It wasn't until the tail end of the afternoon that I was free to go to a small, shabby house at the edge of town and knock on the door and wait for it to open. 

"Cloud . . ." 

"Hi, Mom." 

She pulled me inside and hugged me. "My beautiful boy . . ." 

I flushed. "Don't call me that in front of anyone else from Shinra, okay? It would be embarrassing." 

"I'm afraid you'll always be a boy to me, dear." 

"That isn't the embarrassing part. Look, I've spent most of today on a truck, and before that on a helicopter—do you mind if I sit down on something that doesn't move for a while?" 

"Of course. Come inside properly, and I'll make some tea. You're staying for supper, of course." 

"I'm staying overnight if I can. There's thirteen of us crammed into the inn." 

"Your room is still there, Cloud. Always." 

"Thanks, Mom." 

In the living room, I took Echo off and propped her against the end of the threadbare sofa. Nothing had changed much: everything in the room was worn, but clean. There had maybe been a couple of books added to the big bookshelf. And the picture of my dad, dressed in his firefighting gear, still hung on the wall in exactly the same place. He'd died exactly three days before I was born, trying to rescue some group of idiots who had gotten themselves cut off by a wildfire in one of the far valleys. Mom had gone into labour when they'd told her what had happened. There hadn't even been a body to bury, just a handful of bones and ash. 

Because he'd died in the line of duty, Mom got a pension. Enough to keep us from starving, but not enough for new furniture or even new clothes. 

The amount of money I'd gotten as a trooper had been pretty pathetic, and I hadn't gotten my first paycheque as a SOLDIER yet . . . but when I did, I was going to send part of it home. 

"Cloud, that sword . . . are you . . ." Mom set the tray down on the old chest that we used as a coffee table with a bit more force than usual. 

I smiled. Nodded. "I made it. As of two weeks ago, I'm a SOLDIER Third Class. General Sephiroth gave me that sword personally." 

"Oh, Cloudy . . ." Mom's hands trembled as she tried to pour tea for herself. "Is it everything you thought it would be?" 

That was . . . a really hard question, actually. I thought it over as Mom handed me my tea. 

"What I thought was way too simple," I said at last. "I know so much more, now. I've seen a lot of things that I can't unsee. Or talk about much, really." Jenova. Hojo's lab. The many faces of General Sephiroth. Monsters and blood and madness. "But I still think that where I'm at is the right place for me. I . . . have friends. Comrades. People that I care about, that I want to help and protect. And I . . . Tifa . . ." 

"Tifa?" 

"We're dating," I admitted, and this time I could really feel the heat in my face. "That wouldn't ever have happened if we'd stayed in Nibelheim, I don't think." _If we'd tried, her father would have had me shot and dumped the body._

"You will invite me to the wedding, won't you?" 

"Mom! That's a long way away, if it ever even happens. We don't want to rush things. We both want to be sure that this is right. For us, and for any kids we might eventually have." 

I was smiling again as I watched Mom go into raptures at the thought of grandchildren. It was good to be home, even if it was only for a little while.


	44. Chapter 44

**Zack**

"Habit?" Seph asked, keeping Masamune remained pointed straight at Genesis. 

"Of beating up on poor, defenseless doors whenever they make the mistake of getting in your way." Genesis shook his head. His hair wasn't just grey, it was dull, and his coat was faded. Which was weird, because even if _he_ was sick, his _coat_ shouldn't be. Maybe it was a vampiric coat that sucked blood from the back of his neck? _Get a grip, Zack._ We weren't alone in here. 

There were three other people standing in a loose triangle behind Genesis. Rufus was off to the left. Wearing a Turk-blue suit, which was weird. I'd never seen him in anything except white, but maybe he'd had to make do with whatever was available. He didn't look like he was a prisoner, but maybe Hojo had shot him up with poison and hidden the antidote or something. 

Hojo was at the back, looking just as greasy and self-satisfied as ever. Behind him, there was a bunch of lab equipment—an old-style mako tank, something that looked like a coffin, and who knew what else. The stuff he'd stolen from Gongaga was probably back there somewhere too, on a shelf or something. 

The third guy, I couldn't figure out at all. It was the white dress, mostly. And I don't mean a robe. Men from Wutai wear robes sometimes, but I'd never seen one that looked so . . . flowy. This man somehow managed to pull off a skirt and long hair—long _blue_ hair—pinned up with some kind of ornament without looking at all feminine. Other than that, he had medium-brown skin, a sharp-featured, too-handsome face that should have looked like Seph's but didn't, weird eyebrows that split in two at the outer edges, and a sword. Or something that looked kinda-sorta-almost like a sword, if you'd tried to make one out of big dragon scales stuck together or something. He was standing in front of Hojo, which was annoying, because it made it difficult for Vince to _shoot_ Hojo. 

"Stand aside, Genesis," Seph was saying. 

" _My soul, corrupted by vengeance / Hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey / In my own salvation / And your eternal slumber._ If I let you kill Hojo, then my last chance at survival is lost." 

"Do you honestly believe he has any interest in helping you?" 

"He can be forced. As you should understand. You are as much of a monster as I, after all." 

My hands tightened on the Buster Sword as I tasted something cold and bitter, and memories of Angeal flashed through my head. Hojo was grinning like a shark. 

"No." Sephiroth's voice was just as calm as ever as he verbally slapped the grin right off Hojo's face. I really wanted to cheer, but I knew it wasn't the right time. I'm not that dumb. 

Genesis laughed. "Do you claim yourself to be human, then? My friend, my friend . . ." 

"No. I simply reject the requirement to conform to labels that others place on me. 'Human', 'monster', 'Cetra', 'god' . . . Why should I be any of these things? What benefit does adopting such a label, and trying to force upon myself the set of traits associated with it, offer me?" Seph shrugged and gestured with Masamune, beckoning. 

"How typical. Given an intricate knot, you choose to slice through it with a sword." Genesis raised Rapier, looking ticked off. 

"I prefer efficiency in such matters," Seph said. And then the two of them smashed into each other as though they'd agreed beforehand to start a match at just that moment. Except that they weren't sparring, even for Genesis-and-Sephiroth-tear-up-the-Training-Room values of sparring. Fire flared along Genesis' blade, Sephiroth countered with a high-level ice spell, and . . . I wished I could watch them more closely, damn it, but I had a job to do, and I knew spectating wasn't it. 

_If we find Rufus, then your objective is to get him out safely. Vincent and I will handle Hojo, and anything else we find._

Vincent had been behind us, but I'd half-seen him slip past to my right and vanish among the shadows and lab equipment right when Sephiroth and Genesis had jumped at each other. He was probably trying to sneak past blue-hair to get a clear shot at Hojo. So I'd do my job, and hope everyone else would be able to do theirs. 

I nearly got an involuntary haircut while I was dodging around Seph and Genesis, holding the Buster Sword between myself and the action. I swear I actually felt the flat of Masamune's blade against my scalp for half a second. Then I was clear, and being stared at by blue-hair, Rufus, and Hojo. 

"Ah, the puppy," the scientist said, looking disgusted. I was half-tempted to offer to piddle on his shoes or something. _Angeal_ got to call me a puppy. And Reno. Seph, if he ever managed to figure out what a nickname even was. Not Hojo. But again, he wasn't my job right now, so I had to suck it up. 

I watched blue-hair warily as I crossed over to the other side of the room. He watched me, too, and kept his sword between us, but didn't make any moves. 

"Mr. Vice-President?" I said tentatively, as I got closer to Rufus. 

"Major Fair, wasn't it?" He really did look wrong in any colour other than white. The blue suit jacket cast shadows on his face that made him look thinner and older. 

"Are you . . . in need of assistance, sir?" What the hell was I supposed to say? Rufus was looking at me like he was trying to figure out what to do with me, not like he wanted my help for anything. 

"No." The Shinra heir smiled, just the tiniest amount. As though to prove that he meant it. 

"Right. Um. We should probably just stay out of the way until everything's over, then." 

Rufus was looking at me like I'd grown another head . . . which was something I really didn't want to think about while I was in the same room as Hojo. I tried to subtly herd him into a corner where I could defend him more easily, because, y'know, the only other thing I could do was Sleepel him and carry him out over my shoulder, or something. If I could find a way to get past the Sephiroth-Genesis fight over by the door without getting us both skewered. 

_This is wrong, isn't it? This is absolutely wrong._ The calm, unhurried look on Rufus' face. He should be either asking me to get him out of here, or, if he was working with Hojo, be worried that Sephiroth was going to take Genesis down and come for everyone else. Damnit, I wasn't good at this stuff! Figuring out all the different ways people can be sneaky and evil is more of a Turk job, and the only Turk we had with us was . . . _No, don't look . . ._

A triple gunshot rang out, and I planted myself between Rufus and Hojo, only to see blue-hair move at last. His sword came apart into something more like a whip with parts of a sword blade strung on it, slapped the bullets out of the air with SOLDIER speed, and snapped back together into a sword again like the whip-part was made out of elastic. 

_Wrong, wrong, wrong._ Blue-hair wasn't a SOLDIER. He had dark, tilted eyes like a Wutainese. _Dark_ eyes. Without a hint of mako. He shouldn't have been able to move that fast. 

"Vice-President Rufus, can I ask . . . what's your friend's name?" 

Rufus tilted his head slightly to one side. "No, I suppose you haven't properly been introduced, have you? His name is Susano-o." He was smiling again, and it . . . wasn't a likable smile. Then again, he wasn't a likable guy, as far as I knew. 

_Absolutely wrong,_ my instincts were warning me again. But . . . what could I do? No one had attacked me yet. 

Vincent's gun barked a second time, and this time blue-hair only knocked two of the bullets out of the air. The third shot straight for Rufus, and I was in the wrong place and _oh shit—_

Rufus Shinra _grabbed the bullet out of the air_. The only person I'd ever seen do that before was _Sephiroth_ , who was faster than a normal SOLDIER. 

"Shenlong," Vincent said, his voice low and rough. And Rufus' head snapped around. So did blue-hair's—Susano-o's. Vincent was just barely visible now, in the shadow of the mako tank, and they were both staring at him with these horrified looks on their faces. 

" _Chaos,_ " Rufus said. Except that he didn't sound at all like Rufus Shinra. "You . . ." 

"I told you," Hojo said, smirking. "They're in league with the last of the Cetra, and now that everything has gone too far, they intend to release Omega and cleanse the Planet." 

My eyes bulged out like a touch-me frog's. I couldn't figure out whether to laugh or argue or . . . what. It felt like Hojo had just opened a tunnel to Bizarro World right under my feet. What he had said was so strange it wasn't even wrong. _In league with the last of the Cetra,_ okay, although one teenaged girl wasn't much to be "in league" with. But "cleanse the Planet" . . . what was that even supposed to _mean_? 

" _We have no intention of cleansing anything,_ " Vincent said, and his voice was wrong too, and his eyes had this weird golden glow to them. " _We—_ " 

"Appear only in the end-times," Susano-o hissed. "Do not attempt to deceive us! If you have a body, then you will become their running-dog, as you did before. If Jenova hadn't struck you down—" 

A muscle tensed in Vince's jaw, and his eyes flickered. Gold red gold . . . red. "That thing is stuck inside me by accident," he said in his own voice, "and if you would stop trying to provoke it—" 

Rapier came flying past at that moment, without its master's hand on it. Susano-o's snake-sword slapped it to the ground as it had done with the bullets, but instead of returning to his hand this time, it shot further out, aiming at Vince, who dodged so fast that I could only see a blur. _So in a competition of speed, who would win? Not me, obviously._

It was instinct that sent me jumping backwards. The short, hooked blade that had nearly gone into my guts was only dagger-length, but it was being held by Rufus Shinra . . . and he had two of them, one for each hand. He had to have been hiding them inside his suit jacket. 

"So _this_ was what you were all concealing from me," he breathed, and, well, I was just glad this was making sense to _someone_. "The first sign of armageddon, right under my nose. Right under everyone's noses." 

Lightning crackled through the room—I wasn't sure who had cast the spell, but it was way, _way_ too close for comfort, just like the bullets and the knives and all the rest of the stuff flying through the air, and Rufus' left-hand knife had just ripped through my clothes and left a section of my thigh showing, although he'd missed the flesh. Speed wasn't my strong suit, and Rufus (or whatever he was now—how had I missed the mako glow in his eyes?) was really fast. Further back, Vince was having better luck with dodging, but not so much with fighting back against that snake-sword that kept knocking his bullets off-course. 

"Seph!" I pretty much yelped it. "Stop playing with Genesis and get over here before one of us gets gutted like a fish!" 

Almost immediately, there was a gloved hand on my shoulders, pushing me back toward the door, and I didn't try to argue with it—I fell back toward where Genesis was kneeling on the floor, swordless, panting . . . laughing? 

" _My friend, the fates are cruel . . ._ " A materia flared green on his wrist, and the ground began to rumble. He was casting a high-level Quake down _here_? Was he trying to kill everyone? Murder-suicide? 

While all of that was passing through my head, I was running and raising the Buster Sword, but I didn't get close enough to Genesis to hit him before the spell dumped me on my butt and the roof fell in. 

_Sorry, Aerith. If you can hear my voice from the Lifestream, I'll give you some chocobo racing tips._ Although I didn't know the first thing about racing chocobos. 

I was . . . alive? 

Alive, yes, and the air smelled different, and . . . were those stars? The twinkle-far-away-in-the-sky kind, not the circle-around-your-head-like-in-a-bad-cartoon kind. Genesis had brought the roof down, all right. The entire room. The section of the underground tunnel network we'd been in was now at the bottom of a sinkhole, open to the sky. 

Even as I was taking that in, something roared and shot up into the sky on leathery wings. Purple ones. I wasn't sure what it was, but it didn't look happy. Where the hell was Vincent? And Hojo? Seph was trading blows with Rufus and Susano-o. Masamune was just a flickering streak of silver as it parried all of their weapons at once. And there was loose rock all over the place, and somewhere not too far away, Genesis was still laughing like a loon. 

Seph jumped sideways as a bunch of tentacles came shooting out of nowhere, and the winged purple thing roared again and dove down at Rufus and I jumped forward to defend him, because even if he'd gone crazy that was still part of my mission, and Seph was smashing the Buster Sword out of my hands, and— 

" _Don't! That's Vincent!_ " 

I gave Seph a horrified look, and not just because he hardly ever yelled that loudly. I'd heard about Vince's Limit Break, of course, but I hadn't expected it to be . . . quite like this. The winged purple creature didn't look anything like him, or at least _I_ didn't think so. 

And then I was gaping as _Susano-o_ jumped in front of Rufus and took a hit across the chest from purple-not-Vince's talons, the snake-sword flashing. Meanwhile, Rufus was doing something weird with those daggers of his, crossing them in a reverse grip in front of his chest, and green flared and hellfire-on-a-chocobo, was that a casting of ultima? Where had he even gotten the materia? As far as I knew, there was only one in the world, and it was locked up somewhere back in Midgar. 

Seph had already smashed a Wall spell down between us and the three who were still fighting. If he'd been a little less fast . . . I shuddered and bent down to pick up my sword even as green energy washed over us and tried to eat my skin off. The Wall blunted it just enough that enhanced healing could keep up. 

The moment the spell let up, Seph surged upward, jumping from the ground to the top of a boulder that had been part of the cavern ceiling, and using it to kick himself higher in the air. Looking for Hojo, probably, since Doctor Creepy still hadn't shown himself. Not-Vince was pounding away at Susano-o, and Rufus had those daggers crossed again and I wasn't quite sure who in this mess I was supposed to attack. Or defend. 

A pale grey streak surged past me and smashed into Seph as I belatedly realized that Genesis had stopped laughing. They tumbled through the air for a moment before crashing to the ground, and then not-Vince was on top of them, yanking Genesis off and throwing him away. Susano-o was panting and coughing blood, his chest torn to hamburger and his white dress-thing dyed bright red. Rufus seemed to be trying to cast a Cure or something on him, but I knew I couldn't let him. So I yelled and lunged and swung the Buster Sword, and this time, _finally_ , someone didn't dodge quickly enough. The blade hit where blue-hair's left shoulder met his neck, and continued down at an angle until the top-right part of his body sort of . . . flopped off sideways. 

Rufus screamed, even though I hadn't touched him, just splashed a bit of blood across his cheek and jaw. Light and wind rose around him, and then suddenly Rufus wasn't there anymore. In his place was something that looked like a cross between a dragon and Wutai's Leviathan, or maybe a giant gold-and-red version of a flapbeat. And when _it_ screamed, I dropped the Buster Sword and clapped my hands over my ears. 

Then everything hiccuped around me. The dragon-thing was gone, and so was Rufus, and Vince, back to his normal self, was standing beside Seph. 

I blinked. _Oh . . ._ "I got hit with a Stop spell, didn't I? What happened?" 

"Shenlong picked up Genesis in one hand and Hojo in the other, and ran for his life," Vincent said. "Unfortunately, no one was in a position to stop him." And he and Seph exchanged one of their Looks. 

I scratched my head. "Um, I think I'm missing something here. Who's Shenlong?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis' coat is so damned weird that I still can't come up with a sane explanation for it. o_O;;


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marginally NSFW (not all that descriptive) due to what Vincent does in the shower. Those not interested may wish to skip from "I turned the shower on" down to "Back in the main room".

**Vincent**

At first I wasn't sure what Chaos was even trying to tell me, beyond the fact that Rufus Shinra wasn't really Rufus Shinra. And then I was fighting for control of my body while trying to fight in a more normal way as well. I had almost subdued Chaos completely again when the ceiling fell in and a chunk of rock knocked me into a daze, leaving my body's co-occupant with no one to block its way as it surged forward. 

At least the transformation got rid of the headache before it could really build up. That didn't make up for being left a helpless spectator in my own body as Chaos attacked the strange man named Susano-o, however. Was this man, along with whatever was possessing Rufus, really Jenova's contemporary and ally? His physical abilities were clearly superhuman—he was nothing as simple as just a Cetra. And Rufus somehow had enough mako in him to challenge Sephiroth or myself in a contest of speed. I wasn't an expert, but by my understanding, having that much of the stuff introduced into his body in a mere week should have left him catatonic. What was going on here? 

And then Genesis attacked Sephiroth again, knocking him from the air, and I actually wrenched control of my body back from Chaos for a few seconds, fueled solely by emotion. I was _not_ going to let my partner be hurt, as simple as that. I half-noticed Zack jump in to attack the injured Susano-o, and the Buster Sword slicing down, as I threw Genesis Rhapsodos aside. Sephiroth eyed me warily as he climbed to his feet, and I was already losing control to Chaos again. 

We both fell to our knees as something screamed in a way that made me feel as though my head was going to burst—sonic attack? Sephiroth had dropped Masamune to put both hands over his ears, even though I knew how he treasured that sword. Why in hell was there suddenly a huge serpent-dragon sharing this sinkhole with us? 

«That is Shenlong's true form,» Chaos told me as we tried to shake off our dizziness and stand up again. Shenlong flipped the parts of Susano-o's body over with delicate talons and extracted something so tiny by comparison to its huge form that it took me a moment to recognize it as materia. Summon materia. Had he been carrying it loose in some fold of his tunic? Why did Shenlong want to retrieve it so urgently? It was true that such a materia was valuable, but— 

«You understand nothing, host-mine. That materia, as you call it, _is_ Susano-o—his mind, memory, power, and true form.» 

_What?_

«And the difference between myself and them is more a matter of degree than of kind.» 

As I had suspected. But Sephiroth— 

«Your mate is incomplete as yet. Gaia wants him. She is offering him choice, although why, I am not certain. Perhaps she fears angering you.» 

"Angering _me?_ " I muttered out loud, as Chaos receded and left me crouched beside Sephiroth and trying not to fumble Cerberus. I recovered the gun and managed to fire a few shots at Shenlong, but he was already flying away, at the extreme end of Cerberus' range. If I'd had a rifle, then maybe . . . 

"Vincent? Are you well?" Sephiroth almost reached out a hand, but pulled it back after the smallest of movements. 

"I'm fine," I said, and reached out to him instead, laying my hand on top of his. "Chaos was getting talkative, towards the end." 

"Oh?" 

My Turk-trained instinct was to keep the information to myself until I'd had time to consider its ramifications, but . . . no. Sephiroth had already given me all of his secrets to hold, including the most deeply personal ones. It was only fair that I do the same in return. "It said that the Summon materia Shenlong fished out of Susano-o's body _was_ Susano-o in some sense—a container for his power, mind, and memories. And that Chaos itself, and presumably Jenova, were other beings of the same order." 

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. "Presumably that's true of _all_ Summon materia, then. And I . . ." He reached into his pocket suddenly, and pulled out the protomateria that Aerith had given him—that _the Planet_ had given Aerith to pass on to him. "Once again, this mess begins to make almost too much sense." 

"Chaos also said that you were incomplete in some way, and that Gaia was offering you a choice, although it didn't bother to spell out what options you have." I looked down at the protomateria, and then up at his face, at his studied expressionlessness. Snapped Cerberus back into his holster, and then slowly, carefully, reached over to wrap my arms around my partner and draw his body against mine in an awkward hug, feeling him stiffen and then slowly relax. "Whatever it is, you're not going to have to face it alone." 

"I know." Barely even a whisper. "Even if I truly did become a monster, you would still stay with me, wouldn't you?" 

"Yes." 

He made a soft, low sound, then sighed, and broke loose from my grip to straighten up, scooping up his sword and flicking blood off it so that he could return it to the scabbard. "See if you can unfreeze Zack. I need to get the clean-up operation started." 

"Unless you have a Destruct materia handy, we're going to have to wait for him to come out of it on his own," I said. There aren't a lot of ways to cancel a Stop spell. Sephiroth frowned and shook his head. 

"Trust Zack to get hit with something non-lethal but annoying to break," he said. "I suppose if he doesn't come out of it soon, we'll have to haul him into one of the trucks as-is." 

I shrugged. At least the young SOLDIER was fairly compact right now, crouched down with his ears covered and his hands empty. If he'd been standing with his sword raised, we would have had to cut part of the roof out of one of the trucks, or leave him leaning precariously out the tailgate. 

Sephiroth was talking into his PHS, pushing whatever fears and doubts he still might have aside while burying himself in the role of SOLDIER General. That he wasn't yet at ease was betrayed by the way he was pacing while still holding the protomateria in his free hand, rolling it back and forth. Playing with it. It was abnormal for him to fidget. He seldom wasted a single movement. 

I went over to where Susano-o's body lay and crouched down to examine it. It seemed normal enough despite the bizarrely-coloured hair. Red blood. No smell of mako, only of fecal matter from the reflexive voiding of the bowel as the sphincters relaxed. Hands callused in a pattern that could have been a swordsman's. I couldn't see that odd sword-whip of his anywhere, however. Perhaps Rufus-Shenlong had taken it as well as the materia, Genesis, and Hojo. I thought the white tunic-dress might be made of cotton, although I didn't take off my gloves to test the texture. It was better not to leave any fingerprints to confuse the forensics lab—if Sephiroth didn't think to call one of those in, I was going to. A forensics lab, and Rayleigh. 

So much for Susano-o. As for Rufus . . . well, presumably they'd found a Shenlong materia and stuffed it into the Shinra heir—I wondered if he had volunteered for the procedure, or had he just been the best available container? The real question was, how much of Rufus was still in there? Did he have any control at all, or had Shenlong fought him down? I ran through what I remembered of his interactions with Zack and myself, and came up only with question marks. I simply didn't know him well enough. Perhaps Tseng would be able to make some sense of that part—he was Rufus' usual bodyguard and should know him as well as anyone. 

Sephiroth had finished with his PHS and come over to join me as I frowned down at the corpse. A moment later, Zack swayed and unfroze and started asking obvious questions, which I answered in as few words as I thought appropriate. Where they'd gone. Who Shenlong appeared to be. 

"Let me get this straight—Summons are _people_? Well, sort of, anyway. And they can have normal people-bodies instead of just popping out of materia when somebody calls them?" 

"That appears to be the case." I was thankful to Sephiroth for taking over, because if I had to answer one more inane question right now, I might have hauled off and shot Zack. 

"Then he . . . there was someone else in there with him?" Zack gestured at Susano-o's dead body. 

I shrugged. "Who knows?" 

"It may depend on when the materia is placed in the host," Sephiroth said thoughtfully. "An infant wouldn't have had the opportunity to develop an independent personality yet. The Summon should be capable of taking over completely under such circumstances. And at a guess, genetic analysis of this body . . . will prove it to have been a Cetra." 

_Interesting._ I had a feeling he might be right. _And we thought we'd already found the last one._ Except that these . . . embodied Summons . . . weren't normal Cetra, but something else. Could they hear the Lifestream the way Aerith Gainsborough did? 

Would I be able to hear it, if Chaos and I were better aligned? 

Would Sephiroth, if he chose to become what all of this suggested he was capable of becoming? 

Questions nagged at me all the way back to Mideel, and Chaos wasn't talking. We settled at a resort with a campground, a few miles outside the town. Most of the SOLDIERs were going to have to camp out, with the rooms in the small attached motel reserved for officers and Firsts. Even then, we were going to be two to a room. 

I was unsurprised to discover that Sephiroth had assigned me to share his room. Zack was the only other person he might have felt comfortable with, and the younger SOLDIER could be a pest at times. Right now, I suspected Sephiroth wanted some quiet thinking time as much as I did. Which meant a roommate who wasn't going to demand anything of him. 

He showered first, and emerged from the bathroom still toweling his hair, wearing the bottom half of an old uniform, chest and shoulders bare. I pretended not to be fascinated by the play of muscles under his skin. He was far too beautiful for his own good . . . but after the revelation that had begun this insane day, I knew I would never be with him in the way I would have liked. 

_Impotent._ The one imperfection in Hojo's otherwise perfect creation. The knowledge should have felt like a bucket of cold water being dashed into my face, the end of all fantasies . . . but instead I found myself formulating a new one, one in which I kissed him and touched him and a subtle look of shock developed on his face as he felt his body, for the first time ever, respond. 

I allowed myself the slightest of headshakes. _Vincent, you're turning into a dirty old man._ Fortunately, the clothes I was wearing weren't especially tight at the crotch. Sephiroth wouldn't be able to tell how I was reacting to his semi-nudity, and I would deal with the problem quietly in the shower, and that would be that. 

I slipped into the bathroom. Sephiroth, I noted, had left me precisely half of the bath towels. I locked the door and began to undress. 

Once naked, I forced myself to turn towards the mirror, still beaded with moisture from my partner's shower, and take a good, long, hard look. The left side of my chest was a mess of superimposed scars, the bullet entry wounds from Hojo with the marks of surgery and incomplete autopsy slashing across them. Old knife cuts on my left arm, from several occasions when I'd had no choice but to use it to block a weapon. The deformity of my grafted-together left hand was all too obvious, and there was a greenish shadow under my skin near the scars on my chest where Hojo must have added in something else that was no part of the original design of my body. Nearby, the protomateria pulsed with a light faintly visible even through my skin. The image staring at me from the mirror looked like nothing more than a gaunt, pale, ramshackle scarecrow with glowing eyes and Wutainese-black hair. One that had been torn apart and then awkwardly stitched back together, at that. 

_He could have anyone he wanted. There's no way he would be interested in you, even if he was able to desire anyone at all._

That I was unattractive was a fact. That Sephiroth was incapable of sexual interest was a fact. That I had promised him my support, which he needed far more than me groping him in an attempt to get off, was a fact. That I was capable of restraining myself . . . had damned well _better_ be a fact. 

I had shouldered enough guilt already. It very nearly supplanted the blood in my veins. I was not going to serve myself another plateful of it. 

I turned the shower on and got in. The water was barely more than lukewarm—all of those SOLDIERs wanting to get clean at once must have drained their hot water tank. I didn't care about the temperature, though, since Hojo's tinkering seemed to have made me impervious to both cold and heat. I was more interested in the noise pollution created by the falling water. Just in case. 

I bit down hard on my lip as I reached down to begin stroking myself. A few muffled groans were one thing—Sephiroth couldn't have spent all those years in the army without overhearing someone masturbating, even if he was incapable himself—but I didn't dare let an intelligible name pass my lips. That would destroy all my efforts to keep from hurting him in an instant, if it rose above the sound of the water. 

I couldn't help picturing him in my mind's eye, though. It wasn't just that he was beautiful, or that he resembled his mother, or even his sharp mind and the personality that suited mine so well. The truth was that I had now invested myself so deeply in him, intertwined my life with his so thoroughly that it was becoming difficult for me to imagine being with anyone else. 

That was dangerous. I knew it was. It was something they'd warned us against, during my initial training as a Turk. Don't get too close to the body you're supposed to guard. Don't get too close to your targets, either. You could end up living and breathing those people for months on end, but eventually the mission would be over, and you would go on to the next one. Even partners weren't—couldn't be—eternal. Death was the one great constant in the life of a Turk. Or a SOLDIER. Sooner or later, you would be torn away from the person who had become your focus. 

But I very likely couldn't be killed in my current state, and Sephiroth's personal fighting prowess was second to none. I remembered our sparring match in the Training Room, and the few seconds I had been able to catch of the fight between him and Genesis, mere hours ago. The images sent a hot pulse through my body. Sephiroth was an impressive man at any time, but in a fight, he was magnificent. Graceful, powerful, filled with absolute confidence. 

The desire to run my hands through that moonlight hair, to trace the contours of that body, to taste that mouth, made me ache, but right now the only thing I could touch was myself. So I did, almost harshly, pumping my erection until I came and splattered the wall of the shower with a muffled hiss. 

Afterwards, I washed that section of the tiles as well as myself, to make certain I didn't leave any tell-tale smells behind. I didn't want to rub Sephiroth's nose in my need for relief, so to speak. Although even after scrubbing the area over with soap, I would have sworn I could still smell a faint muskiness. Well, I'd done the best I could. With a little luck, it would be gone by morning. 

Back in the main room, Sephiroth lay asleep on top of the blankets, clothed from the waist down, with Masamune in his arms. I felt little surprise. This room wasn't secure—this was a hotel, and not an especially robust one at that. Having a weapon within easy reach and enough clothes on to be able to fight without distraction or discomfort if suddenly awoken . . . those were basic precautions. And if you didn't need the warmth of the blankets, it was better not to risk getting tangled in them. 

I slipped Cerberus under my pillow and lay down on my back. _Three hours,_ I willed myself. _No more._ I wasn't going to let myself oversleep ever again. 

Only when I was certain I had the time fixed in my mind did I let myself drift down into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, Vincent has a completely different take on Sephiroth cuddling his sword than Cloud did during the zombie dragon mission. They're probably both partly right.


	46. Chapter 46

**Rufus**

I didn't dare follow the shortest path north. Instead, I hopped from island to island until my strength gave out and I was forced to land on a tiny green speck in the middle of the ocean. By then, Hojo had been whining about the discomfort for quite some time, to the point where I'd been tempted to drop him. He might turn out to be useful for something at some point, though, so I'd kept him. Marooning him here in the middle of nowhere when I was recovered enough to leave was probably a better choice. 

Genesis did nothing and said nothing. When I let him go, he staggered over to a tree and sat down at the base of it without so much as a Loveless quote. His expression indicated pain and exhaustion. 

Two ordinary humans, and I had Susano-o's materia, still coated with his blood, clutched in the palm of my hand. Choose one of them? Kidnap someone else? Wait? 

I eliminated Hojo as a possible host for my old friend right away. The slimy scientist probably wasn't sane to begin with, and the results of such a coupling would be dangerous, unpredictable, and permanently damaging to Susano-o. Not to mention that I didn't like the thought of what he might do with the ability to channel the Lifestream's power directly. 

My eyes flicked to Genesis, who turned out to be watching me. 

"We need to talk," he said. 

"What is there to talk about?" Hojo asked coldly. "The lab—my _cultures_ —are all ruined, thanks to your reckless disregard for your surroundings." 

Genesis gave him a cold look. "Your lab and its contents had no value to me, since you refused to use them for my benefit. And if you start to complain again, I will run you through, since _you_ are clearly of no use to me either. Now. Rufus. Or Shenlong—which do you prefer?" 

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter. They're both my names." It was an insane coincidence that Rufus Shinra had turned out to be such a perfect host for what was now the other half of me, but I couldn't quarrel with the results. Thought and memory slotted together perfectly inside me, without significant gaps or internal contradictions, and I felt quite whole and . . . settled inside myself. "You're not going to call me 'Mr. Vice-President'?" I prodded. I'd almost burst into laughter when Hewley's Puppy had addressed me that way. 

"I don't work for Shinra anymore," the ex-SOLDIER pointed out. "To get back to more important matters, what do you intend to do from here?" 

"I'm surprised you care." 

"I came and found Hojo for my own reasons. I never intended to ally myself with you, and I'm currently living on borrowed time." 

I smirked at him, fingering Susano-o's materia. "I may be able to fix that." It would be a gamble, of course—neither of me had ever studied biology, that had been more Jenova's thing—but if my guess was correct, an infusion of additional energy would stabilize him, at least for a time, and the materia could provide that, if he accepted it. 

Genesis . . . twitched, then restrained himself. " _Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess,_ " he muttered. 

" _Loveless_ , Act 1," I identified. "Do you ever quote anything else?" 

"Occasionally. And you're trying to change the subject. Your _plans_ , Rufus." 

What _were_ my plans? Green eyes, red eyes . . . Chaos and its incompletely-fused, stubborn host . . . "That man—the gunman back at the lab—is too dangerous to be permitted to live. I intend to get rid of him. After that, the mako reactors need to be decommissioned." 

"A bizarre agenda, but I'll assume for now that it's the truth. That would mean you'll be going back to Shinra." 

Red eyes, green eyes . . . "No." 

"It would be the shortest path to your goals." 

"If not for the obstacles. Sephiroth clearly trusts that man—Chaos' host. If I challenge him, things will immediately escalate to an all-out fight. I can't win against them both." As Rufus, I'd seen what Sephiroth could do. As Shenlong, I feared he might be capable of far more, if pushed hard enough. And Chaos . . . yes, I remembered Chaos. Remembered watching from afar as it fought Jenova to mutual destruction. As powerful as some of the WEAPONs, and yet it had free will. It might be the most dangerous creature on the Planet. 

That was why the Lifestream had kept it isolated and hidden away, and why the Cetra hadn't allowed it a body until they became desperate. I still didn't understand how Hojo had managed to gather all of it together for an implantation. It should have been unable to condense properly. The greasy, weedy little scientist was more dangerous than he seemed. 

"If Sephiroth stays. You know that the only reason he never left Shinra is that it never occurred to him to do so . . . and I'm sure that isn't the case anymore. Hard to tell how long he's going to keep doing their dirty work. Hard to tell what the new board is going to _want_ him to do. The membership must have changed almost completely since our little friend over there decided to clean up Headquarters." Genesis smirked, and gestured at Hojo. 

It felt odd for a moment that I'd forgotten about that. As Rufus, I'd never cared much about whether my father lived or died, miserable old bastard. But . . . Tseng . . . and Dark Nation . . . I remembered them both falling to the floor, leaking blood. All because they'd tried to protect me from Hojo. 

Cold anger gnawed at my gut, but I forced it down. Time enough to deal with Hojo when I was certain he had no further value. I just wished there was a way I could find out if they were all right. Going back to Shinra would allow me to answer those questions. If only it didn't feel so profoundly, _sickeningly_ wrong. 

I didn't normally give in to emotion. Well, Rufus hadn't. Shenlong did sometimes, oddly immature for his age. But this . . . I couldn't handle it. 

_How could we have been so wrong? How could they . . . have done this?_ Left unchecked, humans were worse than Cetra. Like that stupid saying about power and corruption. Once they'd had the advantage, they'd turned the tables . . . turned on the Planet . . . We three might have gone against consensus, but we'd never wanted this. Never thought it was even _possible_. Humans weren't supposed to be capable of upsetting the order of the universe . . . except that there _was_ no order, and how arrogant had we been for thinking that there was? 

Still, we couldn't tackle this alone. There was . . . AVALANCHE? I'd been funding them for quite a while, knew how to contact them. They were pitifully second-rate compared to SOLDIER and the Turks, but not completely useless. Yes, we would go to them. Fuhito might even like meeting Hojo. 

Great Minerva, what a thought. 

"You look pale, Rufus. Have a headache?" Genesis' smile was less solicitous than mocking. 

"No." I hadn't even realized that I was holding my head. I forced my hands back to my sides, and told myself sternly that nothing hurt. Well, perhaps I did have a slight headache. It had been a long night, I'd never transformed this body before, and it had felt like I was flying forever. And the churn in my stomach was . . . _anger-disgust-guilt_ . . . I willed it firmly away. "You know Sephiroth better than I do. How would _you_ deal with him?" 

"Head-on," Genesis said. Still wearing that smile. 

_And how has that been working out for you?_ Everyone knew it had been years since Genesis had last beaten Sephiroth, even in a practice fight. The superiority of Project S over Project G showed through clearly. 

"I was hoping for something a little more subtle." 

"Subtle. That was never one of my stronger points. I always preferred flamboyance." 

Which was true. Of the three top-ranked SOLDIERs, it had been Sephiroth who was considered the subtle one. Which was somewhat less than helpful right now. 

"Of course, if you made some effort to help with my condition, I might be more inclined to be helpful," the ex-SOLDIER purred. 

"I have to agree with your earlier observation—that wasn't subtle at all." I forced a smirk back onto my face. Now I only had to think about how to persuade him . . . 

Behind me, Hojo snickered. I'd half-forgotten that he was listening in on this. Or perhaps I hadn't wanted to remember. I had more important things to think about right now, anyway. Chaos. Sephiroth. Hateful eyes, red and green. 

"Sephiroth, despite everything I could do, has developed ties to some of his subordinates," the weedy scientist said. "Hewley's Puppy, especially. He may react in a useful way to a ransom situation. At the very least, removing the spiky-haired fool will deprive him of some support. And Project Chaos also has certain vulnerabilities—he's remarkably emotional for a Turk." 

Well, I had wanted subtle, and this was at least more so than engaging Sephiroth directly. But I didn't like taking Hojo's advice. Having raised Sephiroth from childhood, the slimy scientist had to know him better than anyone else, but he lied so habitually and so easily that it was impossible to tell whether or not his advice contained some form of setup. 

But . . . red eyes. Chaos was more dangerous than Hojo. That crater in the north hadn't come from Jenova's little pod dropping back to the surface from our ship. It was the product of Chaos' last attack against her, and it would have done far more damage if Chaos' Cetra host hadn't torn the materia from his flesh and flung himself into the explosion, rendering Chaos powerless once more. And Susano-o and I had been equally powerless, watching all this from above, caught in the spray of debris as it rose to rupture the ship that was keeping us alive . . . 

We'd try it Hojo's way, because I couldn't think of what else to do. But I intended to sleep with one eye open from now on.


	47. Chapter 47

**Cloud**

In a weird way, this was where it had all started. This dusty monster's nest of a building with the broken windows. I mean, it was so dusty that I could still see where the General and Zack and Vincent had stepped when they'd been going back and forth from the lab. In some places, I could even get enough detail to tell who had left a particular footprint. 

"Okay," I said to the twelve people who had followed me inside. "Our orders are to gather up _all_ written material and any digital documents we find in the building. That includes the underground labs, but we'll start up here first. You're to package up everything down to the last twenty-year-old newspaper or hemorrhoid cream advertising pamphlet." Hojo struck me as the kind of person who probably had hemorrhoids. "Jackson, you take—oh, hell." 

When I'd been inside the building as a kid on a dare, there hadn't really been all that many monsters in the entry hall. The odd dorky face might come out at night, but during the day, it had usually just been dusty. A dozen ghirofelgo swinging down from the rafters was far beyond what I'd expected. I snatched Echo from my back as Sergeant Greyson yelled at the troopers to close up. 

_It's just monsters,_ I reminded myself, although ghirofelgo are pretty human-looking if you leave their masks on. But I knew how to deal with monsters, even human-looking ones. I'd even dealt with monsters solo. This time, I had a dozen people backing me up. It should be easy, right? 

Well, it might have been. If I'd been dealing with any other squad. Half of these jokers were out to get me, though, and the other half were just incompetent. Or clueless. And ghirofelgo are . . . annoyingly durable. 

Jackson waved his free hand—he used a lighter, one-handed sword—and hit a bunch of them with a mid-level Fire spell, but it didn't do enough damage to drop any of them. I wished I'd had the sense to ask Sephiroth for an All materia to put in one of the empty slots on Echo's hilt. That little case of his had had plenty of them in it, and I doubted he ever used them all at once. If I'd had one, I might have been able to Sleepel most of the monsters, and then we could have picked them off one at a time. Better tactics than trying to hack, fry, and shoot our way through, anyway. 

When the first ghirofelgo came swinging at me, I threw myself under its slice-y hanging weapon-thing—where monsters like ghirofelgo and dragon riders got their equipment from was one of the great mysteries of the universe—rolled to my feet, and jumped after it as it went swinging up. I wasn't capable of the kind of crazy aerial attacks I'd seen the Firsts use, but I could slash upward and make a ghirofelgo drop its guts messily on the floor, and then land on my feet again and twist out of the way of another pendulum-scythe-thing. I might be young, and I might be new at this, but I was still a SOLDIER, and I was being taught by the best. I could do this. 

My next attack wasn't nearly as well-done, but it sent a pendulum swinging wildly in an unexpected direction and embedded one of its pointy ends in another ghirofelgo's chest, even though they were normally able to dodge each other. Not too far away, Jackson was blasting his Fire spell again and again, and the fourth or fifth iteration knocked three of them off their pendulums. Arnulf had taken one out too, I'd seen it out of the corner of my eye. That meant half the monsters were gone, and a bunch of ownerless pendulums were dangling from the ceiling—how did they get them attached up there, anyway? 

Something whined past my ear, leaving behind a hot trace on my jaw that took a moment to register as pain. I was busy knocking another ghirofelgo off its pendulum before my mind linked the noise and the streak of pain with _bullet_ and _friendly fire_. Well, it was one of those things that happened. Sometimes it was even really an accident. 

One of the ghirofelgo that Jackson had already singed fell, so full of bullet holes that it looked like a sieve. With fewer of them swinging around, I was able to get a good cut in with Echo (she was a wonderful sword, incredibly sharp and far better than I deserved), and popped the head off one. Four left. No, three—Arnulf had gotten another. Two (Jackson). One (Sergeant Greyson, taking advantage of the way they were following more and more predictable paths, I think). And then I Sleepeled the last one and dropped it off its pendulum and stabbed it, and all of a sudden, the room was quiet, except for the sound of a bunch of guys breathing way too hard. 

Then there was a bang and a whine as someone shot one more bullet. I barely realized it was coming at me before I reflexively cut it from the air and then stood there like an idiot, staring at my sword and thinking, _holy crap_. I mean, I'd known it was possible, that General Sephiroth could parry multiple bullets with a single slash of Masamune, but I hadn't realized I was up to moving so fast. 

"What the fuck was that, Byrd?" the sergeant snapped. 

"Sorry, sir, but . . . well, it's Soldier Strife's hair, sir. It just looks too much like what those things have. All blond and messy and . . . sticking up." Byrd had a weird expression on his face, though. Maybe he hadn't expected me to be able to do the bullet-cutting thing either. 

"You're supposed to keep track of the number of monsters in the room, you stupid wanker, and then stop shooting when you run out," Arnulf said, pointing his sword at the knot of infantry. "Do they at least teach you chuckle-heads how to pour piss out of a boot, or are we going to have to give you remedial lessons in that, too?" I'd never heard him talk like that before, but then I'd never seen him mad before, either. 

Byrd flushed, but Greyson was right there to deal with him. "Byrd. Give your gun to Corporal Clark." 

"Sir, I don't think that's—" 

" _Right now, Private._ " Greyson must have practiced that voice, because although it wasn't loud, it cut straight through what everyone else was saying. "Our primary mission here isn't to take on the monsters ourselves. That's what the SOLDIERs are for. So, since you apparently can't handle the monsters, we're going to make sure you leave it to those better suited." 

Byrd gave me a murderous look as he handed over his gun, which Corporal Clark slung beside his own. 

"Okay," I said. "We need to start bringing the boxes in so we can fill them. Jackson, you go check out the kitchen area to see if there are any more monster nests there we're going to need to handle. I'll have a look in the conservatory." There had been a plan of the building in the main archives in Midgar, which was how I knew what all the various rooms were called even though I'd never been in another building with a conservatory, or even come across the word before. I'd had to ask Vincent to explain it to me. "Arnulf, you get to stay here and keep an eye on things, just in case a whole eater comes crawling out of the baseboards or something. Once we're sure the ground floor is clear, we'll start to strip it." 

That got me "gotcha", "right", and "yes, sir", all from slightly different directions. Then Jackson headed off to the right, and I went left. Technically, I should have stayed in the foyer and sent Arnulf to scout around, but I wanted to cool my head a bit. 

_I think Byrd really tried to kill me._ Maybe it shouldn't have been such a surprise, but there's a pretty good distance between bullying someone and shooting them in the back. Bullies may try to goad their victims into doing something stupid, but they generally don't kill directly, or I wouldn't have survived long enough to make it into the infantry. The question was, was Byrd just stupid-jealous of me for getting into SOLDIER, or was there something bigger going on here? 

I found a single dorky face in the conservatory, hiding behind the piano. It was a lot weaker than any ghirofelgo, and I managed to run it through before it could breathe in my face. There wasn't much of anywhere else in the room for a monster to hide. 

When I got back to the entry hall, the infantry squad had already brought a dozen big boxes inside, and, under Sergeant Greyson's watchful eye, were stripping the dining area left of the entrance of anything with writing on it. Including cereal boxes and old napkins with "Shinra, Inc." written on them. Well, better that they were thorough, and anyway, _I_ wasn't the one who was going to have to sort through the mess. The Turks would just have to handle it. 

Jackson wasn't back yet, so I sent Arnulf after him and replaced Arnulf at the base of the stairs leading to the second floor. Which put me on standby-slash-guard duty, one of the most incredibly boring jobs in any army. Zack probably would have spent his time doing squats. I pulled out Echo instead, and began doing basic moves. It was my upper-body muscles and my precision I needed to build up, not my legs, and if anything did come down from upstairs, I'd be able to react more quickly if I was already holding my sword. 

When Jackson and Arnulf did finally come back, they were splattered with monster blood, and Jackson had a cut along his cheekbone, already healing because of the mako. 

"Found a bunch of those dorky face things," Jackson explained. "You were right—this place is _full_ of monsters. Is upstairs this bad?" 

"Probably worse," I said. "And don't even ask about the lab. Although it's mostly bats down there. Sahagin, some times of year, but hopefully not right now." 

"Ugh. Think the guys down in Mideel have it any easier?" 

"With the General breathing over their shoulders?" Arnulf said. "The last trip to Mideel with him was bad enough, right, Cloud?" 

I wasn't sure what to say, so I settled for, "It was interesting." 

"Heh. With that kind of way with words, you should have been a Turk." 

I wrinkled my nose. "Ugh. No thank you." If you had to be able to stomach some ugly stuff to be a SOLDIER, you had to be able to handle twice as much to be a Turk. 

For a while, we just watched the troopers pack away crumbling newspapers and old ad mail that had been in the garbage can near the front door. Boring. As. Hell. 

"Want to spar a bit?" I asked Arnulf after fifteen minutes of that. 

"You and me? Are you kidding, boss? Or do you just hate me that much?" 

"What do you mean?" We'd sparred not all that long ago, right before the Mideel dragon zombie mission. 

"I mean you'd cut me to ribbons. You're already better than I am in technique, and your sword's a _lot_ better than mine. And I can't afford to have you break mine." 

"If you're really bored, we can try a little hand-to-hand," Jackson added. "You're not beyond us there, yet. Few more mako shots and you will be, though. The only guys I know who are as fast as you have already made Second. Once you're at the point where you can hit a bit harder . . ." 

"Guys, you're scaring me." I tried to make a joke out of it, but it was kind of true. 

Jackson snorted. "What did you think was going to happen, with Sephiroth taking an interest and you busting your butt trying to improve your swordsmanship and your magic? I'm gonna be surprised if you spend a full year as a Third Class, unless they want to make you an officer too before putting you up to Second." 

"I . . . um." _I think they probably do_ was not what I wanted to say right now. "I'm not anything that great." 

Arnulf chuckled. Jackson snickered. 

"Sorry, boss, but you actually _are_ ," Arnulf said. "Think about it a bit. You're dropped into SOLDIER late, months behind the guys who were promoted this year. Your focus should be on catching up to them, but is it? Like hell. I don't think you've ever given any of them a second look. You've already breezed past them in every way except what mako's going to fix. You're plowing past Thirds who've been in SOLDIER for years. You're not even fixed on making Second—that's just an interim goal for you. You're chasing after those damned black uniforms, and the way things are going you might just make it someday. Jackson and I aren't going to make it that far, ever." 

"Speak for yourself," Jackson said with a snort. 

Someone nearby cleared his throat, and I turned to see Sergeant Greyson. "I think we're mostly finished down here, Soldier Strife. Where to now?" 

"We'll start with the area upstairs on the left," I said. That contained the atrium, the old study, and the bedroom that had, according to Vincent, been shared by the Turk guards. Hojo and Lucrecia had used rooms at the other end of the floor. The other personnel had been housed in an outbuilding that had disintegrated years ago, collapsing onto its separate outside entrance to the underground area. If Lucrecia Crescent had kept her notes there, they were probably gone for good. _Let's hope not._

Moving everyone without leaving the troopers exposed took some effort. Jackson and I went ahead while Arnulf made sure we weren't attacked from the rear, or from the other half of the second floor. 

We found another nest of dorky face in the atrium, among the plants. Which were, somehow, still green, even though no one had been watering them. I kind of figured out what was going on there when a seedpod tried to take a bite out of my arm, though. Was there anything Hojo wouldn't tinker with? 

After checking the other two rooms, we cautiously gave the All Clear, and the troopers moved in. There was a moment of excitement in the Turks' room when one of them found a hidden compartment in the floor, but it turned out that all that was inside was a case for some kind of long gun, maybe a rifle—the gun itself wasn't inside, but given the letters _VV_ engraved on the case, I was pretty sure I knew who it had belonged to. And on the strength of those letters, someone added it to one of the boxes. 

There was no written material in the atrium, so we moved on to the study, which had a good-sized bookshelf in it. And a safe. 

Vincent had supplied the combination, and I passed it to Corporal Clark. I hadn't expected anything to come of it—if combination turned out to be wrong, which was the worst thing I could envision happening, we'd just have to cut the whole safe out of the wall and ship it back to Midgar for the Turks to play with. 

But really, thinking _that_ was the worst thing that could go wrong proved I didn't have all that much of an imagination, didn't it? 

I don't know how a monster that big managed to wedge itself inside the safe. It shouldn't have been possible, but maybe Hojo had messed with it until it wasn't quite properly physical all the time. When it _un_ wedged itself and shot out with a roar, I discovered it was taller than human, and as weird-looking as anything we'd seen in the labs in the Shinra Building. It looked like two half-creatures sewn together, actually—one red and furry, and one smooth-skinned and muscular, with very large claws. Its head brushed the ceiling of the room. 

Somehow, Echo was in my hand, and I was casting Sleepel at the creature. Which failed. _Immune, oh hell, how am I supposed to do this?_

Other spells flashed past me. Slow. Poison. Those two both bit, and so did the follow-up Fire spell. I used my Sense materia on it, but the only real information that gave me was a name: Lost Number. 

Jackson cursed. "I think I'm out of MP. What about you two?" 

"I might be able to squeeze out one more Cure," Arnulf said. "Boss?" 

"I'm not too badly off, I think." All I'd cast today was a couple of Sleepels, and as my most-used spell, it came out easily. Although I had to admit that I didn't have a huge MP reserve to begin with. "But I think it's better to keep the magic for healing, unless you brought more potions than I did." I ducked and spun to the left to avoid the monster's arm. "Let's cut this guy down to size." 

It was hard, bloody work, and it seemed to take forever to carve the creature up. Especially after the red fuzz fell off and it started swiping at us with both hands. I thought at one point that it had killed Arnulf, but Jackson pulled out a Phoenix Down and sprinkled it on him and he regained consciousness just in time to dodge another blow. But eventually, I took one last cut, and Lost Number crashed to the floor, dead. 

"Ugh," I said, sitting down on a stool that we'd somehow managed not to splinter, and propping Echo beside me as I tried to catch my breath. "I hope that's the only one of those we find." Especially since I ached in every muscle, bone, and joint. And the room smelled odd—not just of dust and blood, sweat and mako, but of . . . _oh._ There was Byrd, sitting against the wall by the doorway, in the middle of a puddle where his bladder had let go. _That_ was where the smell was coming from. His eyes were wide enough that he looked like they were going to pop out of his head, and he had his arms held up defensively in front of him. 

I ignored him and went to the safe. There was a Summon materia inside, and a key, and some papers. I stuffed the key into my pocket, put the materia in one of the empty sockets on Echo (although it was probably too powerful for me to actually cast it even at full MP), and picked up the papers for a look. Handwritten, with diagrams and equations. I didn't actually _understand_ any of it, but that didn't matter. If it had been locked up, it was probably important. 

"Keep this separate from the rest," I told Sergeant Greyson, who was at the doorway now that the danger was gone. He came in to take the papers I held out. "The three of us are going to take a break for a bit, then go clean out the other section of the upstairs." 

I went back to the stool and planted myself on it firmly—I didn't intend to move for at least ten minutes. Arnulf and Jackson both perched on a table on the other side of the room, looking as tired as I felt. It was . . . I checked my watch. Not even ten o'clock yet. It felt like we'd been here all day already. 

I could hear the troopers moving around and talking, most of them still in the bedroom across the hall. 

"He's kind of cool, isn't he?" Not a familiar voice. That must have been the guy who'd been transferred in to replace me. "Soldier Strife, I mean. I can't believe he used to be one of us." 

"I've got to admit, he doesn't seem much like the chocobo-head I remember." Fisher had been an okay guy, I remembered, or at least he'd left me alone instead of harassing me. "He's got an edge to him now. Maybe that's what mako does to you." 

No, it hadn't been the mako. It had been getting my _purpose_ back. Being dumped into the regular infantry had felt like being shoved into a pit. Now I was out of it again, and able to move forward. 

Arnulf was right. I _was_ chasing after those black uniforms. And if I had anything to say about it, I was going to catch up. I would make First, and take some of the burden off Zack and even off Sephiroth. I knew it was going to be a long, hard road, but I didn't care. 

I was where I wanted to be.


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor warning for Scarlet behaving like Scarlet.

**Sephiroth**

The first thing I saw as I stepped off the airplane back in Midgar was a red dress, unfortunately. A red dress and an artfully disarranged pile of too-yellow hair and a puckered pair of too-red lips. 

I stepped to one side, so as not to block the egress of the other SOLDIERs. "This is highly inappropriate, Director Scarlet." _And a lot more effort than you ever put into pursuing me before._ She'd certainly never come out to the airfield to find me before. Had I been consulted, she wouldn't have done so now, either. 

"Always so stiff, _General_ Sephiroth. I though it was Angeal Hewley who was obsessed with honour, but I can see that you're also . . . upright. I like that in a man." 

_I doubt it, since you have the morals of a rabid Kalm fang._ Not that I could actually say that in front of witnesses. She was still on the Board of Directors, damn her. 

She pushed her body against mine, and I couldn't back away without looking like a fool. And when I turned to try to catch her against my hip, she turned with me and plastered herself against my front. There were three layers of leather and one of cloth between her body and my crotch. I wasn't sure that was enough to keep her from noticing, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Her perfume was strong enough to make me gag. 

"You don't want a welcome-home kiss?" Scarlet purred, leaning up. She never even noticed the shadow falling across her shoulder: Vincent, with a neutral expression but murderous eyes, hand reaching downward. _I'll deal with her,_ he'd said. And, _she has no right._

Seized by sudden inspiration, I pushed Scarlet firmly to one side and grabbed the ex-Turk by the shoulder, drawing him in closer. He cooperated without the least hint of surprise, even when I put my other hand on the back of his head and leaned in. 

I'd never actually kissed anyone before, except Genesis. Who had been drunk on tranq-spiked dumbapple brandy at the time, and since he had been the instigator, the entire experience had been sloppy and unpleasant. I'd regretted it from the moment it started, and he'd started regretting it too when he'd sobered up, some ten minutes later. With that as a first experience, I expected the second to be equally bad. 

It wasn't, though. Vincent's lips were dry, and firmer, and they tasted slightly salty, which wasn't bad at all. I didn't even mind when he took the initiative to deepen the kiss, raising his hand to the nape of my neck to adjust our positions slightly, and tangling the other in my hair as his mouth parted under mine. His tongue traced lightly over my teeth, then flicked away, and we broke off as though by mutual consent. He didn't back away, though, instead resting his forehead against mine for a moment, while I breathed in the scent of mako and behemoth and gun oil and . . . arousal? Just the faintest hint of it, but definitely there. I'd noticed it at the hotel the previous night, too, but I'd put it down to the aftermath of combat, which some men do react to in that way. 

I certainly hadn't realized that it was because of me. Given what he knew, I would have considered that unlikely in the extreme if anyone had suggested it to me. 

_I'm going to have to apologize to him,_ I realized. Lust . . . wasn't a voluntary emotion. I certainly hadn't intended to arouse his without satisfying it, no matter how willing he was to be used by me. 

It was only when Vincent had taken a half-step back that I got another look at Scarlet. Her expression had gone slack, and then ever-so-slowly, rage kindled in her eyes. 

I smirked at her. "My apologies for the interruption, Director—perhaps you could refresh my memory about what you wished to discuss? I'm afraid the distraction has completely made it evaporate from my mind." 

"You son of a bitch," she spat. "How could you lead me on like this?" 

"You led yourself on," Vincent corrected. His hand was resting lightly in the crook of my elbow. 

"Indeed," I said. "I apologize if I ever implied I wanted any relationship with you that went beyond the professional. I have no interest in taking a partner who is incapable of fighting at my side. Currently, I can only think of two females who would fit my criteria, and you are neither of them." 

Half of the men who had been on the plane were watching our little confrontation, including Zack. Who was grinning so widely I was surprised the top of his head hadn't fallen off. Most of the others were smiling too, and the rest seemed more curious and confused than disapproving. Trying to come up with the names of those two women, probably. Good. I'd chosen my words carefully to imply certain things about my non-existent sexuality, and it seemed that they'd all swallowed the bait. Perhaps if a rumour circulated that I was only interested in Turks and fellow SOLDIERs, I would start receiving less unwanted interest from outsiders, as well. 

Scarlet had one hand raised, as though to slap someone. She looked at me. Then she looked at Vincent. In the end, she apparently decided that First Class SOLDIERs weren't good targets for physical violence, and stalked away with her back rigidly straight. 

"I'm sorry," I breathed, very softly. To Vincent, the only person close enough to hear. 

"We'll talk later," he muttered back. 

Zack had the brains to keep his mouth shut until we got back to Midgar—to my office in the Shinra Building—although he wouldn't stop grinning as we jounced along in the back of a truck. Once we _were_ private, though, he wasted no time, throwing one arm over my shoulders and one over Vincent's. 

"So should I congratulate you guys or what? You could at least have told me, you know!" 

I gritted my teeth. "We aren't in a relationship, Zack. What you saw was a ruse to get Scarlet permanently off my back, no more." 

Zack blinked several times, his smile fading as he let us go. "Oh. I . . . um . . . sorry. I was just hoping that you'd finally . . ." 

"We're in the middle of a crisis. This is no time to conduct a romance." 

"Then you're never going to have a relationship, are you, Seph? We're SOLDIERs. We're always in the middle of a crisis. I would have thought you knew that better than me." 

"Zack," Vincent said sharply. "Enough." 

"And you're just encouraging him," Zack muttered. 

"Do you only approve of your friends when they make choices you agree with, then?" Vincent was glaring at Zack, although not in a way that rose as far as killing intent. Still, he seemed far angrier than the conversation warranted. 

"That isn't the _point_ , Vince." 

I rubbed my forehead. "Stop, both of you. Please." It was the first time in my life that I had ever gotten a headache without Hojo's meddling being involved. Genesis' fights with Angeal had never affected me this badly . . . but then, I'd known they weren't serious. Not like Vincent being on the verge of lighting into Zack with Turk intimidation techniques. _Is this my fault?_ Normally, Vincent was so controlled . . . _I'm terrible at this . . . interpersonal stuff._ "Zack, I think it would be better if you just left for a bit. I'm sorry." I hated saying that, but I also knew that Zack, being Zack, would just go out to a bar with Kunsel, or to the slums to visit his Aerith, and after a bit of venting, he would be all right again. His upbeat personality made him difficult to damage. Which was fortunate, because I knew I was prone to mishandling him by accident. 

"Okay. It's just . . ." Zack's eyes flicked to Vincent, but then he shook his head and repeated, "Okay. I'm going down-Plate for a bit. Call my PHS if you need me." 

"Thank you." It seemed like the appropriate thing to say. 

Zack gave me a sharp nod and left, closing the door behind him. And something slowly eased out of Vincent. 

"I . . . apologize," I said slowly. It was a word I had found myself using with unusual frequency these past couple of weeks. "I shouldn't have . . . used you in that way." 

The ex-Turk shook his head. "I don't mind. I just wish I could have kept her off you in the first place. Does she bathe in that perfume?" 

"I don't think it smells nearly as strong to the unenhanced." Nor would a normal human be able to pick up the chemical notes underlying the explosion of floral scent. "I should apologize for Zack as well, I suppose." 

"He was just disappointed. He'll get over it. I lit into him a little harder than I probably should have, I admit." Vincent had found his way to his favourite section of wall, over on my left, and propped himself against it. "He wants you to have what he classifies as a normal life, inasmuch as that's possible for someone in your position." 

I felt my eyebrows rise. "What exactly does he think I would do with one?" 

"I doubt he's thought that far ahead. Much less internalized the speech you made to Genesis Rhapsodos last night. To him, you're human, just with a few odd characteristics." 

I was starting to wonder how the conversation had wandered in this direction . . . No, not wandered. Vincent had intentionally steered it away from the subject of me using him to defend myself against Scarlet. He didn't know that I had noticed his reaction to me, and didn't want to discuss it. And it . . . wasn't my right to pressure him. 

_So much for having no secrets._ But there are different classes of secret. Vincent might be hiding this one even from himself. 

"And what do you think I am?" I asked. Testing something else. 

"Yourself," came the instant, calm reply, and I let the corner of my mouth hook up in a smile. _Yes._ This . . . pure acceptance of even my least human attributes was the thing that Vincent gave me that I had never received from anyone else. The shared secrets were secondary. And my headache was gone. 

There was a long, comfortable silence, which was interrupted by a knock on the door. 

"Sorry, sir, but there's someone here who wants to see Soldier Valentine." 

I didn't quite sigh. "Very well. Let them in." 

The door opened. For a moment, all I saw was my secretary, in her infantry uniform and regulation short haircut (which, Zack had told me once, her girlfriend liked very much). Then she moved aside, to reveal another woman. The stranger was older—in her forties, perhaps—and wore a white blouse and a long skirt in a bland neutral colour that reminded me of the office carpet in the PR department. Dark hair, a hint of Wutainese blood in the angles of her face. She also bore a distinct resemblance to Rayleigh Pruitt. 

"Anna," Vincent said, pushing away from the wall. "It is you, isn't it?" 

"I suppose it isn't surprising that you don't recognize me," she said. "After all, I was only five." 

Anna. That was . . . Vincent's half-sister. And Dr. Rayleigh's mother. 

A long hesitation. "General, do you think Major Fair would object if I borrowed his office for a few moments?" 

"Go ahead," I said, knowing that the choice was intentional. I'd had the external walls of my office area rebuilt with heavy soundproofing, but the divider between Zack's and my offices was only built to normal civilian standards. In other words, it was no barrier to enhanced hearing, as Vincent knew well—I'd seen him raise his eyebrows at the sound of Zack cursing his paperwork or talking on his PHS on more than one occasion. But if he wanted to give his sister the illusion of privacy while still letting me hear everything that was going on . . . 

"This way," Vincent told the woman . . . Anna. Doors opened, doors closed. Vincent's keycard was Turk-coded and would open almost anything in the building, including most of the private rooms. I turned my attention to my paperwork, or pretended to. The amount never seemed to lessen. 

"I would offer you a seat, but it appears Zack Fair doesn't bother to provision this area for visitors." Vincent's voice was only slightly muffled by the wall. "Why are you here, Anna?" 

"I had hoped to see my brother," the woman replied. "The one I was never allowed to see or talk to or even _write_ to after he went away." 

"It's been a long time since I was that boy. Or since you were that little girl." 

Had they been close, once? I felt something hot in my chest. Not a familiar sensation. Clearly psychosomatic. Incomprehensible. 

"I remember it as though it was yesterday. You putting me on my first chocobo. Catching me when I fell out of that tree on the hill, because I was too young to realize how stupid I was to try to climb it. Dad telling you that no, you couldn't teach me how to shoot, even though you'd started almost that young. After your father took you away, I cried myself to sleep every night for more than a week. When I spotted you in the background of a picture of the opening of the Corel reactor, I clipped it out of the newspaper. In fact, I still have it. It's the only picture I have of you as an adult." A choked sob. Was she crying? "You don't look like you've changed all that much since then . . . I mean, your hair was shorter in the picture, but . . ." 

Somehow, I was certain that Vincent sighed at that moment, although I couldn't hear him through the wall. "I was in suspended animation for part of the intervening period, after I was badly injured and my life was saved by an experimental treatment that turned out to have a lot of unpleasant side effects. My clothes cover most of the damage." 

"Oh, I . . ." Trailing off into silence again. 

"I assume you're here because Rayleigh contacted you. Do you have the key?" 

"Do we have to go straight to business? When did you become so cold?" 

This time, I did hear his sigh. "After our mother died and I was sent to live with my father . . . Well. Grimoire Valentine didn't have a place in his life for a son, not really. I was sent away to an upper-class boarding school for the next four years. It wasn't an environment that suited me, but it was better than living with him, as I had to do during the summers. It was made clear quite early on that I was a disappointment." 

"It can't have been—" 

"Anna. He didn't even have the courage to act as a father. He let that damned boarding school take my gun and my materia away, when they claimed that I was too young to have them. I spent most of my time shut in one building or another. I wasn't much better than a prisoner." 

I could hear the woman's sharply indrawn breath. "Oh, Vincent . . ." 

"I signed up with Shinra when I was sixteen. The first moment I could. I killed my first human being seven months later, in a shootout with an environmental terrorist group who were trying to sabotage a reactor under construction." A short pause, discernible to me only because I was familiar with Vincent's speech patterns. _And to her?_ I felt an edge of irritation surface. What was wrong with me? "I told you I haven't been the boy you remember in a very long time. I can't give you what you want. Whatever that is." 

"I'm not sure I know anymore." Sobs reached through the wall, only to be muffled as though Anna had pressed something to her face. "Will you—c-can you—come home?" 

"I'm needed here. And it isn't—" 

"It _is_ your home! Even if you h-have another one somewhere else. And _obaasan_ would like to see you, I think." 

"She's still alive?" What would have been a hint of surprise in anyone else's voice was an overreaction in Vincent's. 

"We celebrated her ninety-third birthday this summer. She can barely walk anymore, but her mind is still sharp." 

Another pause. "I'll try to get there. It won't be for a while, though. I really am needed here. There's a shortage of people who can fight at my level. Maybe in a year or two we'll be able to scrape together some candidates for First Class and ease the pressure a bit, and I'll be able to apply for a few days of leave. Right now, I'm lucky if I can spend two consecutive nights in my own bed." 

"Just don't forget." 

"I won't." Vincent's tone was soft, and it pricked at me like a needle. Silence this time, not just a pause. Then, "I really do need to get at what was in that storage unit. If it still exists." 

"I only have the keys. Actually, I didn't know which ones were the right ones, so I brought all of them." Jingling noises. A surprising number of jingling noises. Enough to make me wonder if, in his past life as a Turk, Vincent might not have collected keys. 

"Thank you." 

"I suppose I should be going. Can I . . . at least write you?" 

"I'm living here at the Tower. Apartment C-31. That should be enough to get a letter to me, if you truly feel the need." Vincent had to have requested new housing, because I knew that wasn't the room he had been sharing with Cloud. 

"I understand. And . . . good-bye." 

Doors opened. Doors closed. Vincent re-entered my office. An unfamiliar smell clung to him, and there was a wet patch on the shoulder of his uniform shirt. That woman had . . . embraced him? Cried on his shoulder? Why did that leave a bitter taste in my mouth, and another pinprick of anger deep inside me? 

I was . . . jealous? 

_Yes,_ I realized, feeling incredulous. That was exactly how I felt, seeing evidence that Vincent had offered a moment of comfort to someone else. I had thought that side of him was reserved only for me, and I . . . wanted . . . to possess him. To make him see only me. 

I shook my head. _What is_ wrong _with me?_ Where had this obsession blossomed from? I knew enough about psychology to be aware it was unhealthy in the extreme. Vincent was my comrade and my support, not my slave or my toy. I had no right to order the parts of his life that had nothing to do with me or SOLDIER. 

_I need . . . I need . . ._ If there were words, I couldn't find them. But it felt as though a hollow space was opening up inside me, and refused to be satisfied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Scarlet, slapping does not count as a combat technique. And yeah, Zack deserves a hug after that. Fortunately, Aerith will be quite happy to give him one.


	49. Chapter 49

**Zack**

"And I like Vince most of the time, but he can be such an asshole! I mean, Seph's been my friend since before the two of them even met!" 

Aerith planted both hands on her hips. "Let me go back over this to make sure I understand. This Miss Scarlet met the planes at the airfield when you got back and tried to make General Sephiroth . . . do something with her. The General kissed Soldier Valentine instead of her, so you thought they were in a relationship, but when you asked, the General said they weren't, and you turned into a big blubbly ball of disappointment and got a bit pushy and they both got mad at you." 

"Blubbly? Is that even a word?" 

"It is now," Aerith said firmly. "So have I got it all straight?" 

"Almost." 

"Then what did I miss?" 

I reached around behind me to touch the Buster Sword. _Angeal, please give me strength . . ._ "You know I've been trying to push Seph out of his comfort zone for a while now, because his comfort zone is, well, kinda messed up. It felt like Vince was trying to keep me from doing that this time." 

"Maybe he knows something you don't." 

"Maybe he's gotten too close to Sephiroth, too quickly. Maybe he's a mole working for Hojo. I mean, Hojo _did_ use him for his experiments. He might have brainwashed him into messing with Seph somehow, without Vince even remembering it now!" I knew it was a stupid theory. Really, I was just feeling a little jealous and put-out because Seph had sent _me_ packing and not Vince. 

"Zack Fair, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Aerith echoed my thoughts. "Vincent Valentine isn't . . . or at least I don't think he is . . ." 

"What does the Planet have to say about him?" I asked as the idea suddenly popped into my head. "You never told me what _his_ 'theme song' was like." 

Aerith hesitated. "Confused. Chaotic. And very sad. He feels guilty about so many things for so little reason . . . It makes me want to hug him and tell him it isn't his fault, except that he's even less huggable than General Sephiroth." She smiled and shook her head. "Or at least, that was what it was like when I met him at the Shinra Tower. Right now, I'm trying not to listen to the Lifestream." 

"Is there something wrong with it?" This was the one part of her life that I couldn't really share or help her with. Except when the Planet suddenly decided she needed to deliver a protomateria to the Shinra Building. 

"It's like stepping into a hurricane. Noise everywhere, and currents trying to pull me back and forth . . . There are all these voices yelling, about Chaos and Jenova and Sephiroth and Shinra and mako reactors and . . . well, I think some of them are just yelling. It's so loud I can't really hear the Planet itself, just all the spirits. I think some of them are other Cetra, or were. Maybe even from two thousand years ago, when Jenova was alive." 

She stepped closer and hugged me, and I hugged her back. 

"Zack, I think I really need to get to Cosmo Canyon," she said, near my ear. "I don't understand what's going on, and Nanaki doesn't either, and I'm . . . really scared." 

"Well, then, pack your bags," I said, "'cause I finally got permission. We leave as soon as Spiky's back." 

"We're taking Cloud?" 

"And Tifa. And one of the Turks, as a pilot. Seph figures that two SOLDIERs and their girls going on holiday and catching a ride with Nanaki's transport would look less suspicious than one girl all alone, and Hojo's still out there somewhere. Probably not at Cosmo Canyon—I understand it isn't Hojo's kind of place—but he might be nearby, and Seph and Vince are both going focused-security-paranoid again." 

Aerith shook her head, still leaning against me. "Poor Cloud. Is he even going to get a chance to unpack before they send him off with us?" 

I shrugged. "That's what life in SOLDIER is like, sometimes. He knew that when he signed up. I mean, I told him enough stories. At least it's better now than it was during the war. They used to turn us around in less than a day all the time, back then. You learned to sleep while you were bouncing around in the back of a truck, or you just . . . didn't sleep." 

"That sounds awful." 

"It was. But you got used to it." I didn't tell Aerith war stories very much. She listened politely when I did, at least if they were about me or someone I knew personally, but I'd always had the feeling that she didn't enjoy them at all. For which I didn't blame her, really. 

I snuggled with Aerith for a bit longer. Well, okay, for a lot longer. And we necked a bit, but the church was too public for much more, and anyway, I hadn't brought a blanket. 

"Join us for supper?" she asked as the light falling on her flowers started to fade. 

I shook my head. "I should get back Plateside. I've got eight hundred tons of paperwork to get done again, and if I don't clear the urgent stuff soon, Seph's going to get stuck with it instead of me." I would do anything to get out of doing paperwork . . . except give Seph more paperwork. He was too diligent for his own good, and he needed to be able to leave his office sometimes without SOLDIER grinding to a halt. 

Getting on the train back up to the Plate meant passing through two Sector checkpoints and the Wall Market, or running the roofs all the way to Sector 7. I decided to run, and climbed up a building a couple of blocks from Aerith' house. Hopefully I wouldn't accidentally crash through someone's ceiling, the way I had that one time . . . 

The roofs seemed nice and solid tonight, though, well able to take the weight of me and my sword. A bat came swooping at me out of the darkness, and I cut it in half before I'd even had a chance to recognize it as another out-of-place monster, from the western continent. Those were starting to seem almost normal lately, though, and they were something Second Classes, or even the better Thirds, could deal with. It was the monsters from the north we still had to watch out for. Those were the ones that needed a First to take care of them. 

Maybe the Planet really was mad at us for the mako reactors, and making sure we knew it. If so, it had piss-poor timing. But at least it hadn't sent out anything like that Emerald WEAPON we'd seen in Banora. Yet. Would we even be able to take that thing on, if it woke— _Yeow!_

I jumped backward as a fireball nearly singed my nose off. Where the hell had that come from? And who had been so stupid as to attack a First Class in full uniform? AVALANCHE? They'd been pretty quiet since the attack on Shinra Tower back in June . . . 

The second attack was an entire spray of fireballs, ugly ones with dark red cores. I nearly slid off the roof trying to dodge them all, and one of them got close enough to leave a nasty red streak on my arm that immediately started to bubble black and green. I grimaced. I wasn't sure whether whoever this was was shooting off Hell Firaga or merely Dark Firaga, but either of them was really nasty. I seemed to be having really crappy luck with poison lately. 

More importantly, though, where were the fireballs coming from? I was already moving in that general direction, because I knew I had to close the distance if I wanted to fight instead of just being turned into barbecue, but I didn't have an actual _target_ to head for. 

Wait, was that . . . ? Red, yes, a flicker of something red. Bright colours weren't something you saw often above roof level in the slums, unless some kid had accidentally released a balloon. Right. I'd take a chance on it, since I had no better options. 

And then I realized I was at the edge of the Wall Market, and the red thing was on the other side. On the roof of the Honeybee Inn. Well, wasn't that just great? The Honeybee is a tall building, and it's just a little ways away from all the _other_ buildings in the area. I wasn't Seph, I couldn't jump that high. Well, _fine_. Those stupid neon signs should do well enough as footholds, right? Except that I'd kind of forgotten, or maybe never realized, that the glowy parts of the signs were made of glass. Glass that wasn't really all that thick. Good thing it was the sole of my boot that broke one of them open, and not my hand. But I ended up dangling from the edge of the sign while a bunch of guys yelled at me from below (of course it was all guys—who else would be out in front of that building?), scrabbling with both legs for something to stand on. Found something at last, and heaved myself upward. 

When I finally got to the roof and found him, he was laughing his head off, and I wasn't entirely sure I blamed him. 

Genesis looked a lot better than he had at Banora. His hair had gone back to being red, and so had his coat. Maybe it really was vampiric. 

Had he found a cure? _Too late,_ my mind whispered. _Too late._ Too late to save anything important. 

I drew the Buster Sword and lunged at him, feeling my lips draw back from my teeth. I _hated_ him in that moment, like I'd never hated anyone before. I don't normally hate people at all. Everyone has some good in them—that's what I'd always thought. But now . . . _Angeal . . . why were you the one to die, and him the one to survive?_

I knew, of course. It wasn't Angeal's body that had been the problem, it had been his mind. He'd been unable to handle the thought that he had Jenova in his veins, that maybe some unimportant bit of him wasn't quite human. Unlike Genesis, who had pretty much decided he liked being a monster, as far as I could tell. Unlike Sephiroth, who had at least had the evidence of his unhuman eyes as a warning. 

Why had it had to be _Angeal_ , my mentor, my _friend_ , who was lost? When he'd been one of the best people I'd ever known? 

The Buster Sword smashed against Rapier with a metallic clang. Genesis was still grinning. I'd never wanted to wipe an expression off someone's face quite so badly before. I threw myself into the fight with everything I had. But I . . . wasn't good enough. 

It made me feel sick, but it was true. I _wasn't_ good enough. Genesis wasn't as strong or fast as Sephiroth, but he exceeded me in both categories. Especially speed. And Rapier was a far lighter sword than the one I had inherited. _And_ he was actually a hair better than Sephiroth with materia, when Seph himself was already scary enough. Pure rage was getting me close enough to hack at him, but I had a feeling it wouldn't last too much longer. 

_Slash-thrust-kick-slash-duck—_ Fireballs shot past, over, and very nearly through me. Genesis had always loved fire-elemental spells, and he could invoke them without so much as a twitch. Seph at least showed _some_ evidence when he was calling up a spell, although he never had to actually stop moving and concentrate to get one out, like the rest of us mere mortals. Sparring with him was the only reason I was keeping up with Genesis as well as I was. I swung the Buster Sword up, cutting from below . . . 

. . . and was hit with a faceful of dazers. Nasty little sharp things that look like a picture of a sperm from a high school science textbook, except that they hit you tail-first. And they have a special poison on them. It doesn't work as well on SOLDIERs as it does on civilians, but I could feel myself slowing, and Genesis cut hard at my sword and sent it spinning away, over the edge of the roof. 

"You . . . how could you do that? You know what that sword is. You know what it means." My lips were going numb, but I forced the words to come out clearly. If I mumbled or slurred, Genesis would make a snippy comment about it, just because he was Genesis. 

"It's a hunk of metal, Puppy. A hunk of sturdy, high-quality metal, and falling from this height won't apply any more force to it than using it to split a Behemoth would. I'd surprised you aren't more worried about it falling _on_ someone." 

I hadn't even thought about that. My eyes widened in panic, and I tried to scramble over to the edge of the roof for a look, but my legs were locked solid and wouldn't move. 

"Most of them left when one of my fireballs lit up a pile of trash nearby," Genesis said with one of his nastier smiles. I'd _thought_ it was smelling even worse than usual around here, just a little, but I hadn't realized that was the reason. "I have no quarrel with mortals like them, after all. Or with you." 

"Could have fooled me." Esuna—did I have a Heal equipped? _Crap, I think I had it in the sword._ "So if you weren't looking for a sparring match . . . why _are_ you here, Genesis?" 

"Mmm. You really should be addressing me by rank, you know—I don't think I was ever officially discharged. But as it happens, Puppy, we're having a bit of a problem with a shortage of messengers. Hojo is capable of producing an endless parade of creatures that can fight, but blending into human society well enough to slip into Midgar undetected, and then pursuing a non-destructive mission, requires, shall we say, a different skill-set." 

I did my best to memorize the words. Genesis liked hearing himself talk, and there might be something in there somewhere that Seph could pick apart. Or Vince, since that was the kind of thing that Turks learned how to do. 

"So what's the message, and who's it for?" I asked. "I know you didn't come here just to talk to _me_." 

"Not _completely_ stupid, are you?" Genesis purred. "No, the message is for Sephiroth and his pet Turk. Or is he the Turk's pet? That seems more likely to me, although Hojo seems to think otherwise. Then again, Hojo has been having . . . problems." 

"That covers the 'who' part." I tried to flex my toes, hidden inside my boots, and felt them twitch. The dazers were starting to wear off, then. Good. "Does that mean we can move on to the 'what'?" 

"You've been hanging around Sephiroth far too much, it seems—you're picking up some of that goal-directed personality of his." 

I shrugged my shoulders, and once more got only a little twitch. "Angeal asked me to look after him." 

"Angeal. Asked you. To look after Sephiroth." Genesis looked like he wanted to burst out laughing. 

"I guess he figured there wouldn't be anyone else left," I said, and Genesis flinched. 

"It seems I should remember that even puppies have teeth. Well, then. Tell Sephiroth and his _friend_ that we are waiting for them in Wutai." 

"Why Wutai?" The longer I could keep him talking, the more likely he would let something important drop. 

There was that nasty smile again. "Why not? It's nice and quiet and remote, and the only people who will get blown up if we fight there are Shinra's enemies anyway. You should be hap—" 

Maybe the dazers had worn off all the way, or maybe I was just so mad that I broke through them. Anyway, there was a very satisfying cracking noise as my fist hit the side of Genesis' face, and I knew it wasn't coming from me. I'd broken his cheekbone or something. He reached around to feel at it with his left hand as he raised Rapier with his right. I gritted my teeth. If he came at me again, I was going to have to jump, and even that wouldn't offer me a very good chance. I'd be a sitting duck for his fireballs until I touched down. 

"You care that much for people who are still your enemies? People whose brothers and fathers and sons you killed? Who killed your friends?" 

"They're still _people_ , you bastard," I snapped. "And here I thought you wanted to be a hero." 

" _There are no dreams, no honour remains,_ " Genesis quoted, looking serious for once. I knew it was a quote because I'd heard the entire poem from him over and over again in bits while Angeal had still been alive. Never in order, though, so I wasn't sure what part of it that line came from. And I didn't really care, either. 

A single wing unfurled from Genesis' back in a shower of feathers. "I'll see you in a few days, Puppy. Just make sure my message doesn't get misdirected." And he jumped from the roof. 

I hurried to the edge, but of course, there was no nice little pile of smashed Genesis down below . . . and if I were honest, I really wouldn't have wanted there to be. Bad enough that Angeal was dead without his best friend dying too. I did see a bunch of guys looking uncomfortably at the Buster Sword, stuck upright in the ground, though. They didn't notice me when I jumped from the roof too, only when I landed hard enough to drive my boots a full inch into the ground. The sole of the left one flapped as I pulled it out. _Great, there goes that pair._ How many boots had I gone through since joining SOLDIER, again? 

I nudged a couple of civilians out of the way, grabbed my sword, and pulled it loose. It took a fair bit of effort, too, and I examined the point suspiciously, but it looked like Genesis was right: it wasn't damaged. I returned it to its place on my back, turned, and began to walk toward the train station, bootsole flapping with every step. 

_Wutai._ I didn't really want to go back there, and I doubted Seph did either, but that wasn't the real problem. 

What the heck was I going to tell Aerith?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll step back in time a bit in the next chapter for a look at Genesis' sudden cure.


	50. Chapter 50

**Rufus**

" _Legend shall speak / Of sacrifice at world's end,_ " Genesis quoted as he held the materia up to the light. I'd cleansed the blood from it, leaving only the crystal. The ex-SOLDIER sat on a narrow cot, with electrodes strapped to his forehead and bare chest. I'd expected him to protest the indignity when Hojo and Fuhito had insisted on monitoring him while he did this, but he'd merely sighed and acquiesced. 

SOLDIERs. I have never understood them, and never will. It was Tseng of the Turks who . . . well, he didn't exactly raise me, there had been an endless parade of nannies and tutors and assorted guardians for that, but Tseng was the one who had stayed, the one who mattered. My friend, my companion . . . my first crush. No, that had been . . . _black hair/blue hair, wavering image . . ._ I grimaced and rubbed my forehead. 

"Stop babbling nonsense and equip it already," Hojo snapped. He seems to be becoming more and more short-tempered. "You are the most frustrating subject I have ever worked with. I cannot understand how Hollander managed to tolerate you." 

"Hollander cultivated patience, Doctor. It's a type of gardening that you would do well to devote yourself to." Genesis' smile was cold, and his gaze never left the materia. 

"Are you enjoying wasting my time?" Hojo spat. 

"Perhaps I'm merely worried about my hair turning blue once I use this. It would be quite a blow to my vanity, you know." 

"Such trivial reasoning," Fuhito said from where he sat at the computer, monitoring the equipment. 

Didn't either of them have even a rudimentary idea of how to persuade someone to do something? "Genesis, you're aware that we're all just going to stay here until you either equip that thing or refuse, in which case Fuhito will find another host for it. I doubt you're enjoying sitting there any more than we're enjoying talking at you about it." 

The ex-SOLDIER's eyes narrowed. "Give my cure to someone else? You must be joking." 

It wasn't a cure, just a stopgap. But I wasn't about to tell him that, and even if he managed to keep his personality intact and assimilate Susano-o's memories, my old friend knew nothing about biology. That had been Jenova's field. Susano-o had been an engineer, and I . . . ugh, that was headache material again. What was I even good for, really? 

"If you don't intend to give it up, stop being a coward and use it." I kept my tone as bland as possible. Pretending to be bored, when I was anything but. _Susano-o . . ._ The moment this near-madman took in his materia, I was going to lose my friend. Even if part of his personality survived, he would never be the same again. Just as I never would be. Either of me. 

Was the grief dull or sharp? I couldn't have said. I was so confused. _I want Tseng._ The man who had protected me, the one who had put my first shotgun in my hands and taught me how to use it. I'd never been all that close to my father, barely remembered my mother ( _black/blonde hair, small delicate frame, two images that overlapped and merged_ ). Tseng had been the one who felt like family to me. Tseng . . . Susano-o . . . _blue/black . . ._

My thoughts seemed to get tangled whenever I thought about Tseng, and it hurt . . . but I wasn't going to stop thinking about him, either. Not until he stood in front of me again. 

"A . . . coward," Genesis said slowly. " _Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul,_ " he added to the materia. He lowered it slowly from the light, and held it cupped against his chest. 

I didn't see the exact moment he equipped it, letting it slide into his flesh. I did see the moment that he froze in place and the monitoring equipment went berserk, though. The babble Hojo and Fuhito were throwing back and forth about it meant nothing to me, but I could see the way Genesis' brainwaves danced violently around as two personalities and sets of memories fought for dominance inside him. 

Just as spectacular was the way his body suddenly flushed with colour, the energy of the Lifestream restoring him all the way out to his fingertips and spilling out to dye his coat red where it lay folded beside him. I still didn't understand how the thing with the coat worked, but then I didn't understand Jenova's virus either, or what kind of mess Hollander might have made trying to modify it. Shinra's Science Department's internal policies seemed to select for researchers who bit off more than they could chew. 

Hojo's lab coat, somewhat stained now since he hadn't changed it since we'd fled Banora, rippled at the back. For a moment, there was a sort of peak below his left shoulderblade, as though something was trying to push through the cloth. That sort of thing was happening more and more often as his temper got shorter and shorter. The things he'd injected himself with were turning him into a monster, and I didn't feel sorry for him at all. Not one bit. Especially since I suspected he would relish the identity just as strongly as his sickening son cast it off. Green-eyed bastard . . . mongrel blend of human and Jenova-that-was-not-Jenova . . . Jenova, who would never be again, her materia destroyed by her own will and intent, so that she would not spend the rest of eternity suffering for what she had done. 

_We're selfish,_ I thought as Genesis coughed, a stricken expression flashing across his face, then began to laugh as though doing so hurt him. _But that's normal, isn't it?_ Rufus had been trained in selfishness from an early age. _And does it really matter? What difference does it make, when the world is mad?_

" _Even if the morrow is barren of promises / None shall forestall my return,_ " Genesis quoted . . . and with those words, I knew this truly was Genesis Rhapsodos. Only Genesis Rhapsodos. Susano-o was gone. That bit into me, and my eyes stung. 

_Tseng,_ I reminded myself. _Tseng is still out there, somewhere._ And I fingered the fabric of my suit. 

"How do you feel?" Fuhito asked, his eyes on the ex-SOLDIER. 

Genesis was smiling. "Better than I ever have. Powerful. Inexhaustible. I think I could . . ." He raised his hand, eyes narrowing in concentration, and I felt the energy shed by the Lifestream move around us as he formed it into a precise shape. Fire shot from his fingertips and twined back along his glove as he watched it, admiring. Susano-o had never been that good a free caster, but magic had been Genesis' forte from the beginning, and now that he understood the principles, he was having no trouble applying them. 

He snuffed the flames with a wave of his hand. And looked at me. There was a slight twitch as our eyes met, a puzzled expression on his face. The small part of him that was still Susano-o feeling the pull of the larger part of me that was still Shenlong, no doubt. I shook my head, and he looked away. 

"We will take some samples first," Hojo said, picking up a syringe. "Then it will be time for you to leave." 

Genesis rolled his eyes, but he also held out his left arm. 

There was no purpose in my remaining here, I knew. I had been hoping . . . but there was nothing left to see. 

_What am I even doing here?_ I asked myself, not for the first time, as I climbed from the basement lab to the balcony of the second floor of the remote fort that was AVALANCHE's base in Wutai. Everyone I passed eyed me askance. I might have been financing these people for years, but I was still a Shinra, and that meant I was, in some sense, the enemy. 

Everything was so confused. I wasn't in control of anything around me, and for Rufus, that was a terrifying sensation. Even Shenlong hadn't been in such a position very often, and never one with this slow, dragging inevitability. 

Chaos. I needed to focus on that. Chaos was the enemy, because it was _everything's_ enemy. It wanted only death and destruction, and if that fool in whose body it had somehow ended up thought he could control it, he was deluded. It had to be dealt with, and if I could make that filthy mongrel's too-green eyes close for good in the process, that would be a bonus. To reach that goal, I would use whatever tools came to hand. Even if they didn't know they were tools, or being used. Fuhito and Hojo were both arrogant idiots with no sense of politics, and most of the other high-level AVALANCHE members weren't much better. They made tools of the finest kind.


	51. Chapter 51

**Vincent**

Sephiroth's office had proven unequal to handling the sheer amount of information we now needed to process, so we had taken over a conference room on the next floor up. It had taken us a while to clean all the bugs out. I'd left them on Veld's desk, mixed into a bowl of pistachios. It was the kind of not-quite-a-joke we'd often played on each other in the old days. Hopefully Reno wouldn't get there first, somehow bite into one, and break a tooth. 

The conference room table was stacked with papers: my father's notes, and the materials from Nibelheim. The latter were being sorted through by a mixed group of Third Classes and junior Turks, looking for anything in Lucrecia's handwriting as displayed in her diary—we'd made copies of the flyleaf so that they'd know what to look for. They were also responsible for discarding crumbling newspapers and boxes of long-expired cereal, although I was of the opinion that Cloud had done the right thing by gathering up the junk rather than risking leaving something important behind. 

My father's papers were in front of me, being sorted into rough piles according to half-remembered categorizations. Grimoire Valentine had been an archaeologist, albeit one with an interest in scientific analysis of his finds—he'd chosen Lucrecia as his assistant specifically to fill in the detailed knowledge of mako chemistry and biology that he lacked. Since his notes had been packed up haphazardly by the people I'd hired to clean out the house, information about Chaos was mixed with material on the Sleeping Forest and the City of the Ancients, Wutainese eidolons, the fabled sunken island of Meroplagia, and even what looked like a report on preliminary stages of the excavation that had found Jenova. Often I had to read several pages from a given bundle to understand exactly where they fit into the morass. 

In one corner, Reno and someone from the IT department were conducting techno-archaeology on the data disks retrieved from the ancient computers in Nibelheim. The number of devices they'd had to daisy-chain together to be able to read the data was little shy of mind-boggling, and even now they were arguing about the format charts and other non-text data might have been stored in. 

The front of the room was populated by Sephiroth, Zack, and a handful of older Second Classes, veteran officers from the Wutai War. They had a number of maps on display on the series of large screens hung on the wall—world maps, maps of Wutai, and a small assortment covering other regions—and were discussing them in low voices. Zack's report of Genesis' message of last night had been the equivalent of a grenade dropped in Sephiroth's lap without the pin. Why would they tell us where they were? Was it a trap? If they were in Wutai, _where_ in Wutai? What about the insane numbers of monsters SOLDIER was currently dealing with? Was it absolutely necessary to mount another expedition against Genesis and Hojo immediately, or could we afford to spend a few days killing the monsters back first? 

If not for the semi-nonsense Hojo had babbled when we'd encountered him in Banora, I don't think Sephiroth would have been running his planning session in such a public venue, but he'd made it clear that he wanted to know the moment any of us found anything useful. 

"Oh, my." Unfamiliar female voice, from the doorway. My hand was instantly on Cerberus, although I didn't get up, merely glancing in that direction to evaluate the potential threat. 

Non-threat, rather. Or most likely non-threat. The person in the doorway was a stout, round-faced middle-aged woman, shorter than Cloud, who wore a safari vest and hiking boots. Her hair was mouse brown and arranged in a loose bun with lacquered Wutainese hairsticks (although she plainly wasn't of that ethnicity), and she had a pair of half-moon glasses balanced on her nose. She might have had a utility knife or small derringer hidden somewhere, but I suspected she was unarmed. Behind her stood Rayleigh Pruitt, lab coat and all. 

"Dr. Rayleigh, would you care to introduce our guest?" Sephiroth asked. It was hard to tell from his tone whether he had expected this newest visitor or not. 

"Of course, General. This is Dr. Helena Smythe, a professor of archaeology from the University of Midgar. Her area of interest is the Cetra and their relics. You did ask me to find someone . . ." 

"When I heard you'd found Grimoire Valentine's missing notes, I couldn't make myself stay away," Dr. Helena said with a smile. 

"Were they really missing?" Zack said. "Although I suppose Vince knowing where they were doesn't count if nobody knew where to find _him_ . . ." 

"You'll have whatever access to them you want, if you can help us answer the questions we need answered," I said, and the archaeologist's eyes flicked from Sephiroth to me. 

"Hmm. Well, I'll certainly try, Mister . . ." 

"Vincent Valentine," I supplied. 

"I see—are you some relation to Grimoire?" 

"He was my father." Seeing her blink and frown, I added, "My appearance is deceptive—I'm quite a bit older than I look." 

"Oh. And the questions?" 

"You four are dismissed for the time being," Sephiroth said to the Second Classes. They left the room, and Rayleigh smiled, winked, and slipped away in their wake. "Sit down, please, Dr. Smythe. This may take a while." 

"Helena, please, General." 

"Dr. Helena, then." 

The woman smiled, nodded, sat. Sephiroth didn't. I wasn't bothered by the shadow looming nearby, but I wondered how she felt about it. She hadn't gone tongue-tied, at least, and I suspected that she was _not_ a member of the Silver Elite fanclub. 

"What do you know about how the Cetra regarded and used Summon materia?" Sephiroth asked. 

Dr. Helena blinked. Clearly, that hadn't been the question she was expecting. Then she blinked again, and her gaze sharpened. "You've come across something involving the Immortalis." 

That word. I'd half-forgotten about Chaos using it, about finding it scrawled across the picture of a stone relief more than two thousand years old. "Go on," I said, offering half a nod in return for Sephiroth's sharp glance at me. 

"I should begin at the beginning, I suppose," the archaeologist said. "The Cetra differentiated between _materia_ —the normal green, yellow, blue, and purple sort that act as a method to shape the surplus force of the Lifestream—and _immortal seeds_ , what we call 'Summon materia'. Supposedly, there are exactly twelve dozen immortal seeds. Each of them holds the complete life force of a being formed by the Planet." 

"Wait a sec, here," Zack said. " _A_ being? Some Summons call more than one thing." 

"Not exactly, young man." 

"Major Zack Fair," Sephiroth provided. 

"Zack, then. It can _appear_ that more than one creature is called by invoking a given Summon materia, but each is in fact the manifestation of a single life force. It's as though the being inside the materia is wearing different costumes." 

"So they've kind of got multiple personalities or something? I guess that makes sense. I'd probably go crazy too, if I was shut up inside a rock all the time." 

"This isn't the time, Zack." Sephiroth looked like he had a headache coming on. I didn't blame him. 

The archaeologist cleared her throat. "Unlike normal souls, which return to the Lifestream to be cleansed, these creatures are kept apart. They are midway between normal living beings and WEAPON, you might say—capable of wielding extraordinary power, but also capable of taking on physical bodies and interacting with the world as humans do. The Cetra called these beings _Immortalis_. The Wutainese claim they're gods, although I'm of the opinion that that view is . . . not entirely correct." 

"The process by which they take on physical bodies is clearly not spontaneous," Sephiroth prompted. 

"No, it isn't, although the details are not entirely understood. There is an extraordinary relief that was found a hundred or so years ago in Wutai that may detail the process. Or it may be some form of fertility cult worship object—I believe that was the other common theory." 

"I believe I know the one you mean," I said. Sephiroth raised an eyebrow, so I amplified, "It depicts several women inserting spheres into their vaginas." 

Zack flushed, Dr. Helena coughed, Reno snickered, and one of the Thirds who was sorting the materials from Nibelheim dropped a stack of papers. Well, I hadn't been aiming that explanation at them, and I had kept it precise because I knew that was what Sephiroth would find easiest to absorb. Given where he had grown up, he would be most accustomed to discussing sexual matters in clinical terms, without the shields of metaphor used by those more normally socialized. 

"Implying that they incubated the materia directly to produce a fetus," Sephiroth said. 

"Again, that is one possible interpretation," Dr. Helena said. 

"And if such a materia were equipped or surgically implanted into the body of an existing human being . . ." 

"That is far outside my area of expertise, General." 

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed slightly. "Very well, I won't ask you to speculate. Is there any list of these Immortalis? The specific, finite number you gave suggests there must be an enumeration somewhere." 

"Unfortunately, no complete list has survived. We have about eighty names, but a lot of them are variations on one another—things like 'Crimson Ifrit' and 'Golden Ifrit', or 'Bahamut' and 'Bahamut Zero'—which makes it difficult to tell how many individual entities the names represent." 

"Are the names 'Susano-o' and 'Shenlong' on the lists known to you?" Sephiroth asked. 

Dr. Helena's eyebrows rose. "They're represented on the lists and on some very old documents in Wutai, I believe. Susano-o, the serpent-slayer who wields the Serpent Sword. Shenlong, master of storms, the dragon who summons the rain. There's still a shrine to him in southern Wutai, where farmers sacrifice in the hope that their fields will receive enough water." 

Sephiroth frowned. To my eye, he looked as though he was thinking something over. "What about 'Jenova'? It might be written as 'Jienoba' or similar in Wutainese." 

"That name . . . has survived," the archaeologist said slowly. "But not as a part of the list of Immortalis, or on any monument we have ever found. It's part of a legend passed down orally in places like Cosmo Canyon. The Great Sky War and the death of the Cetra. If even half of it is true, it's likely that the reason we've never found it written down is that there were no Cetra left to write it." 

I pulled out my PHS and pulled up one of the photos of the "Jienoba" relief on its small screen, then handed it to Dr. Helena. "Given that information, what do you make of this?" 

"I have no idea. It's clearly an eidolon, which means it's the representation of an Immortalis, and yes, those characters could be read as 'Jienoba' or 'Jenova', but . . . Where does this photograph come from?" 

"A ravine in the mountains of northern Wutai." 

"Hidden . . ." the archaeologist said slowly, before handing the PHS back to me. "The Cetra had a city in that area at one time, or so the legends claim. Most of it has been destroyed by geological upheaval. It may be that what you saw was their work, rather than a true eidolon. From before the Great Sky War. Or it might be something created by humans for the Cetra—I believe that did happen now and again, and it would explain the lettering." 

Sephiroth seemed to be deep in his own thoughts again, so I spoke up instead. Or perhaps he'd been meaning to leave this part to me all along. "One more name, Doctor. 'Chaos'." 

Once again the archaeologist spoke very slowly. " _Soul wrought of terra corrupt, / Quelling impurity, / Purging the stream / To beckon forth the ultimate fate / Behold mighty Chaos / Omega's squire to the lofty heavens._ It . . . doesn't sound very poetic in our language, unfortunately. Nor does it contain the same connotations of dire warning as the original. Chaos _is_ on the lists of Immortalis—at the very end of the two versions of the list we have the ends of—but it was different. The Cetra didn't give it flesh. Ever. They seem to have feared it. But beyond that fragment of poetry, we don't know why. It's something Grimoire was working on towards the end of his life, or so I understand." 

I remembered the poem, as she called it. Lucrecia had quoted it to me, at some point during the blurry, hole-riddled sequence of memories that bridged the space between the moment I'd been shot by Hojo and locking myself in the coffin. I could remember her voice speaking those words. Odd, given that I'd lost almost everything else said around me during that period. 

«That, I wouldn't let you forget,» Chaos whispered to me. «Not ever.» Something shivered along my brainstem. 

Odd how I'd never realized before that my co-walker was vain. 

"I must admit," Dr. Helena was saying, "that all of this is making me very curious." 

"It's a curiosity that I would advise you to keep to yourself," Sephiroth said. "For various reasons, we cannot risk letting the details of the current situation leak out—possibly not even after it has been dealt with. And if we told you and information _did_ end up leaving our control, you would be the first suspect." 

He didn't add anything more, but Dr. Helena didn't seem to be completely stupid. "Is that a threat, General?" 

"A warning," Sephiroth replied. "The outcome wouldn't be under my control. Dealing with information leakage isn't SOLDIER's job. It's the responsibility of another department." 

"And they would be unlikely just to take me out for tea and ask me nicely to never do it again, I take it. Very well. I understand your position, although I don't _like_ it—academia thrives on the free exchange of information, after all. I'll take my consolation prize and go away quietly. Is there anything further I can do for you?" 

"If you could pass to us any further information you can find on Susano-o and Shenlong, that would be helpful." Sephiroth turned his back, returning his attention to the maps on the screens at the front. _Audience at an end,_ I thought wryly. 

"The notes will be passed to you when we're done sorting through them," I added. "The material on Chaos won't be included, but the rest of it should be enough to hold your interest for a while, I expect." 

"Thank you." There was a hint of concealed annoyance in that. Altogether unsurprising, since we had whetted her curiosity and then left her hanging. She would be spending the next few weeks trying to put things together in her head, I was sure. Until something else happened to distract her. 

I went back to sorting papers while Cloud escorted Dr. Helena back down to the lobby. 

"So, I guess the trip to Cosmo Canyon's off," Zack said, his voice pitched very low—conversation among adjacent SOLDIERs only. 

Sephiroth shook his head. "No, you're still going." 

"Really?" 

"I want at least one of us clear of this operation, in case it turns out to be a worse trap than I already suspect it is. And I think we do need to educate our Cetra. At the moment, she can't do anything more than respond to the Planet's whims. That is of limited value. If we could somehow establish two-way communication . . ." 

Zack blinked several times. I had to admit, it was an interesting idea. 

Sephiroth nodded toward one of the world maps, which, like the pin-infested paper one in the SOLDIER lounge, had all the out-of-place monster sightings marked on it. "I don't think we can deny it at this point: the monsters are most likely being shuffled around by the Lifestream, or some comparable force. We can't destroy the Planet's motive force without destroying ourselves as well, and we can't shut down the reactors without finding some alternative way to supply electricity first, or a tremendous number of people are going to die as civilization collapses around us. Hospitals, water treatment, farming, transportation, food distribution, heating and cooling buildings, creation of every kind of material object . . . mako power figures into it all. If we could negotiate, it might buy us enough time to develop alternatives." 

"The difference between a soft landing and a crash," I said slowly. 

Zack looked white. I suppose he'd never stopped and thought about what the loss of the mako reactors would actually _do_. I hadn't either, not in detail, but I had enough sense to realize just how much of a mess it would be. Or perhaps it was just the time-lapse vision provided by being out of circulation for a quarter of a century that made it obvious to me how many things now depended on electricity, and by extension mako, that had been done by gas or steam or chocobo power or even human hands before. 

"Aerith Gainsborough may be the only hope of millions of people," Sephiroth said grimly. "And she has no idea what she's capable of, or how to harness her abilities to help. Also, there are people in Cosmo Canyon who were doing research into alternative energy sources. I need you to talk to them if you can, Zack. I want as many of the unknowns filled in as possible before I try to present all of this to the Board of Directors." 

"But I'm—" Zack started, just a bit too loud. Reno looked in our direction. Sephiroth glared at him until he returned his attention to his computer. "I'm not a scientist, or an engineer, or a negotiator, Seph," he said, lowering his voice again. "I'm just a SOLDIER." 

"One who has the ear of a Cetra . . . and a personality far more engaging than my own." Sephiroth half-smiled. "No one in Cosmo Canyon is likely to agree to speak to me, even if I didn't need to go to Wutai. All we need at this point is a simple executive overview of the extent to which they've developed the technology. Reeve will be the one to negotiate the details." 

"I still think you're putting _way_ too much faith in me, but I'll do my best." Zack flashed us a grin. 

_And I don't agree that your personality isn't engaging._ I held down a snarl of annoyance as my body responded to the thought, to the sight of Lucrecia's son, and the memory of hair like silk against my arm. I was _not_ a teenager, and it was undignified to be reacting like this. 

Thinking of Hojo could fix it, though. Thinking of Hojo and his needles and scalpels and tanks of mako was . . . very un-erotic. Although I wasn't quite insane enough to thank the Planet for that. 

«You never seem to appreciate me, host of mine.» 

"That's because you're nothing but trouble," I muttered, and added "Chaos," as an explanation when Sephiroth glanced sharply at me. 

"A shame it won't respond to questioning," the General said. 

"And that we can't trust it even if it did," I agreed. Chaos clearly knew almost everything, but chose to tell me only as much as amused it. 

A long silence, and I returned to sorting papers until I ran out. Carefully, I squared the piles and set most of them aside. And the item at the top of the stack that remained was a copy of a photo of a broken Cetra-made stone tablet covered with text in an ancient script. And written at the edge of the sheet, as though to provide a translation, were the words Dr. Helena had quoted. _Soul born of terra corrupt . . ._ For a moment, the ancient Cetra writing blurred before my eyes, making a maddening effort to form itself into something I could read, and pain lanced through my head. I muttered a curse and rubbed at my temples. _That_ hadn't happened in a while, not since the earliest days in the coffin. Chaos' memories trying to overlap with mine. Or at least, I thought that was what was trying to happen. I'd never let it get far enough to find out. A few times, when I hadn't been able to fight it down right away, it had been as though I could feel my _self_ wavering, Vincent Valentine being swallowed up, chewed to pieces and destroyed. A fitting punishment for my sins, perhaps, but letting Chaos free would have been by far the greater sin. 

"Vincent? Are you all right?" Sephiroth's expression was flat as he looked at me, but his eyes spoke of concern. 

"Chaos again." Was that the truth? I didn't know. 

"Does it not want us to find out what's in that?" A slight gesture of one gloved hand took in the pile of papers. 

"Possibly." Or maybe it wanted so badly for me to find out that its thoughts were leaking. 

"Hmm." 

"I'm not sure I need to read it, anyway. I think I may already have most of the pieces. The important ones, at least." Slowly fitting themselves together inside my head, thanks to the archaeologist having provided a few of the missing links. 

"Tell me." 

"There's a legend from southern Wutai that my grandmother told me when I was a child. That this world used to be a barren rock before the Lifestream came and filled it." In my head, Chaos chuckled, making a sound like the rasp of claws over stone. "If the Lifestream could come here from somewhere else, it follows that it could leave here and _go_ somewhere else. Chaos' purpose seems to be to return everything to the Lifestream so that it can be moved intact, and Omega is the thing that carries the Lifestream on its journey. Chaos _is_ an Immortalis, a very powerful one. So powerful that the Planet doesn't normally let it condense into materia—it was held as an isolated pool of incompletely condensed mako instead, to make it impossible to summon or incarnate it. Lucrecia . . . found a way around that." I wondered if she'd realized, at the time she'd done it, exactly how much of a risk she was taking. With my life and sanity, and with the world. 

Sephiroth was frowning. "Shenlong and Susano-o—and Rufus—have been convinced that we intend to use Chaos to 'beckon forth the ultimate fate' and purge everything from the surface of the Planet, or perhaps they merely believe that Chaos' presence makes such an outcome inevitable. Genesis wants to live at any cost, and Hojo . . . is stirring the pot, as an experiment or a distraction, or merely because he's insane." 

"I don't see how knowing _why_ they're doing a bunch of crazy stuff helps us," Zack said. 

"Prioritization of targets," I said. Conducting this entire conversation in whispers so low they verged on being subvocalizations was starting to become a strain, or perhaps the problem was just that I wasn't used to it. 

"Precisely. Hojo _must_ be destroyed. Genesis is peripheral, as are the people from AVALANCHE. The other two, if they find another body for Susano-o . . ." A slight headshake that didn't disarrange so much as a strand of silver hair. "Tseng came looking for me earlier. He wants to save Rufus at any cost." 

"Tseng doesn't have that much authority," I pointed out. "Not over this." 

"It was more in the nature of a personal request, I think. They've always been more than master and servant." 

"But is there a Rufus left to save?" Zack ran a hand through his hair, disarranging the spikes. 

"Impossible to tell." Sephiroth left it there. We all knew that Shenlong was far more in control of that body than Chaos was of mine, but was that because it had forced Rufus down, or because he had permitted it to rise to the surface? That he had recognized Zack suggested the presence of at least part of Rufus' memory in there . . . and why choose to clothe himself in a precise replica of a Turk's uniform, if not to demonstrate some kind of solidarity with that group? The suits were custom-made. It was difficult to even obtain samples of the fabric if you weren't a Turk. 

"We need to get him alone." That much was obvious to me. "Then we'll know." 

Sephiroth nodded grimly, and I wondered whether either of us—anyone except Tseng—really wanted Rufus Shinra back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Vincent's thinking of things other than his love life here (and so is Seph), but I promise that won't last for long.


	52. Chapter 52

**Cloud**

It had been a crazy couple of weeks, and I was starting to have a lot of sympathy for all those times Zack had complained about never having a break between missions. Nibelheim, then Mideel, then back to Nibelheim to get the papers from the mansion, and now we were on our way to Cosmo Canyon by helicopter. Which meant pretty much back the way I'd come from a couple of days ago. 

_Get used to it,_ I told myself. This was life in SOLDIER: going from place to place on missions. Unless you screwed up and got posted permanently somewhere as a glorified monster hunter, but I wasn't going to do that. I couldn't do that. It would be worse than failing to get into SOLDIER in the first place, because screwing up would be a hundred percent my fault. 

Beside me, Tifa was staring out the window, at the weird formations of red sandstone that made up the ground in this area. Zack and Aerith, in the seats in front of us, were holding hands, Nanaki was sleeping in the cargo area at the back, and at the very front, Tseng was manipulating the helicopter's controls. The Turk hadn't said a word since we had lifted from the ground, but the glance he'd given Aerith as we'd boarded had been worth a thousand words, poor guy. I mean, I knew what it felt like to be in love with someone you knew you could never have, and Tifa hadn't even had another boyfriend. Plus, I got the impression that Turks . . . weren't supposed to have relationships. Maybe from something Vincent had said—I couldn't remember. But it made a romance between Tseng and Aerith doubly impossible. 

"Oh, wow, is that a telescope?" Tifa said. 

"Looks like it." Zack had to lean past Aerith to get a look out that side of the helicopter, but she didn't seem to mind. Or maybe she was just used to Zack. "That must be the town down below it." 

Now I was the one leaning across my seatmate to look out the window. The town was built all up and down the side of the canyon. Some buildings had diagonal braces to support their floors where they stuck out from the sheer rockfaces. 

"I hope the inn isn't one of those places hanging from the walls," I said, and sat back down as my stomach gurgled and flipped. Still not enough mako to really prevent me from getting motion sick, although it was a lot better than it used to be. 

"The inn is dug into the cliff, so it's more like a cave," Nanaki said from behind the seats. "Don't worry. And anyway, some of those houses have been there since before I was born." 

"Funny, I would have thought you have been here before, Spiky. Since it's so close to your home and all." 

I rolled my eyes in Zack's general direction. "It's closer to Gongaga than it is to Nibelheim, and I went north across the mountains when I left town." 

"You _what_? There's no road that way, is there?" Zack really did look surprised. 

"No road you can drive, but there's a pass that can be crossed on foot or chocobo if the snow isn't too deep. Once I got to Rocket Town, I hitched rides along the coast until I got to the harbor at Casa del Sol." My clearest memory of that trip was leaning over the tailgate of a farm truck so that I could throw up on the ground and not in the hay the farmer was hauling. Well, that and getting snow down my boots at the highest point of the pass and spending a really miserable several hours walking with wet socks, but not daring to stop because if I let myself cool down with my socks still wet, I'd probably lose toes to frostbite. Ugh. 

"That sounds like an adventure," Aerith said. "I'm not sure I would have had the courage to do any of it." 

I laughed. "It wasn't about being brave. I just hated Nibelheim so much back then I would have arm-wrestled a bandersnatch if it meant getting out of there." And I'd hated myself, too. Not anymore, though. These days, I felt . . . almost too happy. Despite everything. 

"And anyway, adventures s— _whoa!_ " Zack tumbled across Aerith' lap as the helicopter set down outside Cosmo Canyon. Tifa hid a smile. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought it served him right. "Guess I should have sat down a little quicker." That was the thing about Zack. If something little went wrong, he bounced back from it instead of brooding the way I would have. 

Tseng shut the helicopter down, flipping switches as though they were his worst enemy. I wondered if he was regretting having volunteered to act as our pilot. I'd kind of expected it would be Reno who came, actually. Or Cissnei, although I'd never met her. One of the Turks that Zack talked about more, anyway. 

Nanaki was bouncing down from the helicopter the moment Tseng opened the door. He galloped across the meagre open space we'd set down in, and then up along a winding pathway that led towards the town. Tifa jumped down and ran after him. Zack and I looked at each other and kind of shrugged, gathering up our swords. Aerith helped us get the luggage out. Tseng kept doing helicopter-y things until we'd gotten everything else arranged, then hopped down to follow us like a large blue shadow as we headed for the town gates. 

Which were guarded. Of course. But Tifa had convinced Nanaki to wait, which must not have been easy. 

" . . . And here they are," she said to the guard as the four of us walked up. "Took you long enough." 

"You're the one who left us to carry all the luggage," I pointed out . . . although really, we'd brought one bag each, with enough stuff for a three-day stay. Nanaki hadn't even brought that much, of course. He was home at last. 

"They're Shinra," the guard said. He was a big, olive-skin man wearing a leather vest that left his arms bare, the way our uniforms did ours, and he had a spear in his hand and a pistol in his belt. 

"They're my friends," Nanaki said firmly. "They helped get me out of there— _General Sephiroth_ helped get me out of there. Not everyone who works for Shinra is evil. In fact, I don't think most of them are. They can't help being ignorant and misguided." 

"Hmm. Well, all right, since you vouch for them, Nanaki. And since you didn't actually bring General Sephiroth." The guard half-smiled. "Although I'm not sure that having a Turk with you is much better," he added with a sour glance at Tseng. 

"I'm just the pilot," Tseng said evenly. 

"We'll have our eye on you," the guard said. 

"I don't doubt it." And from the flatness of Tseng's voice, he didn't care much, either. Probably he'd expected it. 

Once we were past the entrance to the town, Nanaki didn't so much run ahead as run circles around us, greeting nearly everyone he passed in the street, and being greeted in return. He was making me tired just watching him. I hadn't had that kind of energy since I was maybe four or five. 

Come to think of it, how old _was_ Nanaki, in firelion terms? Probably more than the equivalent of a human four or five, from the way he talked, but he might not be full-grown yet, either. I don't think any of us had even asked his age. 

"He looks like he's having fun," Tifa said, sounding a bit wistful. I wasn't quite sure what to say to her, because I knew neither of us was ever going to have much fun going back to Nibelheim. Tifa had had it easier back home than I had, but she'd told me while we'd been waiting for the movie to start the other night that she wasn't exactly in love with Nibelheim either, and that if she had anything to say about it, she was going to spend the rest of her life in Midgar. 

Sometimes Nanaki would circle back to us to give us directions—along this street, up these stairs, through this tunnel in the rock. Always upward, or at least that was what it felt like. I was fit, and mako-enhanced, and my legs still started burning after a while. Tifa and Aerith were probably having an even worse time. 

We didn't see any other firelions. I noticed that, and I bet Tseng did too, even if no one else did. Were there any others? Nanaki couldn't be the absolute last, could he? 

At last we got to the inn. Which was, as Nanaki said, dug into the cliff face. Whoever had set this up had reserved three caves, er, _rooms_ for us, and Tseng immediately went into the smallest one and closed the door. That left the rest of us to decide whether the other two rooms were going to be divided up as guys/girls, or by couples. Or it would have, if Zack hadn't immediately passed Aerith the key to the same room as him, and Tifa and me the keys to the other one. And then he winked at me. 

"At least there are two beds," Tifa said thoughtfully. 

"I bet Zack and Aerith use only one in theirs," I said, dropping my bag dead center on the bed nearest to the door. 

Tifa blushed, but she also said, "You're probably right. I . . . don't think I'm ready for that yet, though." 

"Neither am I," I said. Knowing I was blushing too. We'd kissed and cuddled a bit, and she'd let me touch her breasts through her shirt, and that was as far as we'd gone up to now. 

"My father would have a fit if he knew I was sharing a room with you." 

"My mom would cheer us on. I think. She likes you." 

"That's because your mom is nice. Not like my dad. I wish he'd understand that protecting me doesn't mean locking me up in a box." 

I shrugged. I had to admit that the one thing my mother had never done was try to smother me. She hadn't been happy when I'd told her I was leaving Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, but she'd helped me pack instead of arguing with me, and then hugged me and cried and sent me on my way. Nothing like what Tifa had had to do. Part of the old-fashioned silliness about how boys and girls were treated differently for no good reason in places like Nibelheim, I guess. 

Someone knocked at the door of our room. "Hey, Spiky! C'mon out—Nanaki wants to take us to meet his grandpa!" 

"Think it's going to be all uphill again?" Tifa asked. I groaned. My legs had only just stopped hurting. 

It _was_ all uphill. All the way uphill, to the observatory at the very topmost level of the town. And everyone was still looking at us funny. Guards even tried to block our way at one point, but they stepped out of the way again when they saw Nanaki. 

Closer up, the telescope was _huge_. I mean, the lens-thing must have been as wide as Masamune was long. You had to be able to see forever with that thing. 

The observatory also had the most useless fence I had ever seen, since the ladder we climbed up to get there (and watching Nanaki grabbing onto a ladder with his paws was really interesting) was already inside the fence, _but_ there was a gate that didn't seem to be fasten-able, so you could still walk off the edge of the cliff. And the only thing outside the gate was a mailbox—wouldn't it have been better just to put it beside the ladder? 

"What? All this is . . . ?" An old man sitting on a green globe came floating out of the observatory building. 

"Grandfather!" The firelion shot towards the old man and nearly knocked him off the globe as he rose onto his hind feet to rub the side of his muzzle against the man's cheek. 

"Nanaki! You're all right!" 

Zack tilted his head. "No _way_ can you two actually be related." 

"Ho ho hooo! No, we're not blood relations," the old man admitted, stroking Nanaki's back with one thin, withered hand as the firelion . . . purred, I guess. Made a deep, rumbling sound that wasn't a growl, anyway. "And who might you folk be?" 

"They're my friends, grandfather. The one who just spoke is Zack Fair, and the one who looks like a chocobo is Cloud Strife." Well, at least he hadn't said I looked like a chocobo's butt, so I'd let him get away with it this once. "They helped me get free from where Shinra had taken me. The girls are Aerith Gainsborough and Tifa Lockheart—they were locked up with me. Aerith is Zack's girlfriend. And she's a Cetra." 

The old man's head jerked back—surprised, I guess. "Ho ho hooo! I had no idea there were any Cetra left." 

"I think I may be the last one," Aerith said. "And I'm only half. Not just that, but my mother died when I was about five years old, before she had time to teach me much. I came here to Cosmo Canyon hoping that there would be someone here who would be able to help me fill in the gaps." 

"But you do hear the Lifestream." The old man floated closer, with Nanaki trotting behind him. 

"I've been trying not to, lately," Aerith admitted. "It's frightening, with everything so loud and angry." 

"By the way," Tifa said. "Nanaki introduced us, but we still don't know your name." 

"I'm sorry—that was rude of me. I'm Bugenhagen. And I never did catch the name of your blue shadow there." 

"Tseng of the Turks. I'm only here to fly the helicopter, since Major Fair never learned how, and provide additional protection for Miss Aerith." Tseng said that with a perfect poker face again, except for his eyes. I wondered if I was the only one who noticed. 

"Hmm. Well, do come inside. It seems that young Miss Aerith and I have a great deal to talk about." 

Bugenhagen and his floating sphere led us through what looked like a combination dining room and kitchen to a room with some odd equipment in it. 

Tifa was the one who said uncertainly, "Is that a planetarium projector?" To me, it looked more like a dumbbell with lenses sticking out of it. 

"Yes, it is," Bugenhagen said. Tseng hadn't followed the rest of us in here, I noticed. Had he stopped in the entryway, or stayed outside? And had he done it to guard, or to snoop? 

I didn't really like Turks all that much, a lot of the time. Vincent was okay, but he was in SOLDIER now, anyway. Reno was a pain, Rude never gave much of an impression of anything except looming menace—which he didn't do nearly as well as Sephiroth—and Tseng and Veld both scared me. 

I jerked and had to catch my balance as the entire floor started to move, lifting us up into the room's dome. The lights faded, and suddenly we seemed to be floating among stars, with a model of the solar system floating in front of us. 

"I think it would be best if I gave you all a short introduction to the Lifestream," Bugenhagen said. "To make certain all of you have the minimum information before we begin to discuss more complex matters. Do you know what happens to the soul when a person dies?" 

It looked like this was going to be a pretty long story, so I settle in to listen.


	53. Chapter 53

**Sephiroth**

Wutai. 

I hadn't been back here since the war, and as we flew low over incongruously green rice paddies nearly ready for harvest, flashes of old memory paraded themselves in front of my mind's eye. All had a certain similarity to them. Mud. Corpses. Wading in one of those paddies down below, trying to pretend the ankle-deep water wasn't more than half blood. Cleaning Masamune obsessively to get the last trace of redness off, to avoid the rust that I now understood would never take hold on the metal, for all that it appeared to be ordinary steel. 

Very few individual moments stood out. I had seldom been in real danger after the first hectic months, but the whole war had sapped my spirit and disgusted me. For me, it had been little more than senseless slaughter. An ordinary armed human is below level ten on the Gramilo scale. Most ninjas are fifteen to twenty, on the same level as a Third Class. When I'd first been sent to war, I'd had an estimated level of forty, and I had grown rapidly stronger as I'd matured. There had been no way of any of them winning against me unless I'd let them. 

Vincent's hand brushed my wrist. _Are you all right?_ his eyes seemed to ask as I glanced at him. I gave him the most minute of nods in return. 

Odd how we were able to do that—communicate so clearly without saying a word. But it had been that way almost from the beginning. He hadn't had to learn me, or I, him. There had been an instant understanding between us whose nature still mystified me. 

Behind us sat ten SOLDIERs. Second Classes, the best that I could find. We weren't going to bother with encirclement tactics this time. All they had to do was keep whatever riffraff AVALANCHE had stationed at their base off our backs, while we went in for the kill. And we wouldn't be working alone. Not only were Reno and Rude flying the plane, but Veld himself was sitting in the cockpit's jump seat. And they'd brought some moderately heavy artillery, for themselves and for Vincent, racking long guns beside our swords and packing nearly three hundred pounds of explosives into the cargo space. If possible, we were going to blow the top off AVALANCHE's base, crack it like a nut and dig the Hojo-shaped meat out, and damn any diplomatic concerns. 

If I had to subjugate Wutai a second time to clean up after this, then so be it. 

Stepping down from the aircraft also brought back a thick, churning mass of memories. Wutai, in any season, smelled like nowhere else I had ever been. The fall air was crisp, but not cold or tainted with rot. The normal smells of a small Shinra base mixed with incense and woodsmoke wafting in from the edge of town. Very little of Wutai relied on electricity even now. The locals lit their buildings with oil lamps and heated them with braziers, as they had done for hundreds of years. Even refrigerators were more likely than not to be standalone propane units. 

Nothing had really changed since the war except the demographic composition of the population and their attitude toward Shinra. Which I was going to need to deal with here. In spades, as Zack would have said. I might be willing to send diplomacy flying out the window if necessary, but it _wasn't_ necessary yet, and it would be easier to do this if we weren't getting harassed from behind by ninjas. There were still remnants of the old elite Crescent Unit slopping around, and while they were no challenge for me, they might be able to beat one of the Second Classes if they caught him alone. So as the highest-ranking person from Shinra involved in this, Director and General Sephiroth was going to have to go pay a visit to Lord Godo and explain the situation. 

I was not looking forward to it. Formal meetings were bad enough. Formal meetings conducted in Wutainese where the other participants openly hated me were likely to be worse. And yet I had no choice. When the Second who was in charge of the Wutai base—Brooks, that was the name—offered me an escort, I refused him irritably. I was an invading force all on my own, in the eyes of Wutai. Adding extra people would just make it worse. 

Not that I was going to go alone, either. We'd already discussed this and agreed on who my escort would be. So I walked out through the base's front gate with Vincent to my right and Veld trailing behind. 

The road from the base joined up with the main street right at the edge of town. I followed the twisting route with my eyes focused straight ahead, pretending that people were not moving out of our way to the left and right, trying to avoid crossing our path or having our shadows fall across them. Pretending I didn't hear the noises of them spitting on the ground, or the profanity-laden whispers. 

The road snaked through the town and across a bridge or three before reaching what was currently Wutai's royal palace. There had been a more elaborate building outside the city once. We'd burned it to the ground during the war, leaving only this, the town residence that had once been used by adult heirs who wanted a separate establishment. As soon as we approached the main gate, two men stepped out to bar it. 

"General Sephiroth, you are not welcome here," one of them said. In Wutainese, which meant that either he knew I knew the language, or he was making a deliberate attempt to be annoying. With Wutai now functioning as a tourist town, they wouldn't have given door guard duty to anyone who didn't speak the common tongue. 

"I would be surprised if I were," I said in the same language. "I wish to speak to Lord Godo. Please inform him of my presence." 

The guard frowned, but I knew he would do as I had told him. Currently, Wutai lacked the power to refuse Shinra anything. Being excessively rude to me would just precipitate an incident that they couldn't afford. And sure enough, the guard immediately called out a teenaged apprentice ninja and sent him inside the building with the message. 

Being forced to wait in the street wasn't unexpected. I settled in place facing the palace and pretended to be paying no attention whatsoever to what was behind me, although in fact I was focused on that area, identifying each sound and smell and locating it in space. If something came up that could only be detected visually, I would have to trust Vincent to catch it. Pretending that I was absolutely confident of my own safety was part of the game here. If I showed weakness, Godo would no doubt try to drive a wedge into the hair-thin gap and pry it open. He was an experienced and canny ruler as well as a skilled ninja. 

Ten minutes. I tracked the time with care, because I knew that that, too, was part of the game. Godo couldn't leave me waiting too long, but at the same time was none too eager to see me, and I could hear the sound of rushed preparations within the building, feet running back and forth. If we'd been admitted instantly and without preparation, that would have meant something as well. 

At last the runner returned to the entrance, which was then opened for us, and we were ushered into the audience hall, which was two stories high and indubitably the largest room in the building. Godo Kisaragi was at the far end, seated on a cushion on a slightly raised dais, while ninja lined the sides. More than half of those troops were female, presumably because the women had been more likely to be given defensive duties during the war, while the men were sent to the front lines. 

Three more large cushions sat before the dais, one slightly forward of the other two. Once more, I looked neither left nor right as I strode forward with the others flanking me. Pausing when I reached the cushions, I undid the buckles holding Masamune's scabbard to my harness. I knelt on the centre cushion, sitting back on my heels— _seiza_ , the Wutainese called that position—and placed Masamune on the floor beside me. Her position was another detail in the game: placing her in front of me would have been a symbolic offering of my strength to Godo. In some ways, Wutainese etiquette was easier for me to deal with than that of the society I'd been born into. At least its rules, though myriad and subtle, were also coded, articulated, and formally taught. There was no presumption that they would all be absorbed by simple observation, which was difficult when your observational sample was as skewed as mine had been. 

Vincent sank down to my right, sitting _seiza_ as though it were something he did every day. Veld sat cross-legged. 

"General Sephiroth." 

"Godo Kisaragi." I returned the greeting, if it could be called that, using no title. Several of the ninja arrayed along the walls hissed, but I paid them no mind. 

"Why are you here?" 

"To locate and destroy something that may have fallen into the hands of AVALANCHE." I paused to let that sink in. "We know they are here. They sent a message to Midgar, indicating their general location. Do not attempt to tell me otherwise." 

"And yet you bring Turks with you." 

"The only reason this matter has fallen into the hands of SOLDIER is that we didn't catch it in time," Veld said unexpectedly. In the common tongue, but it was clear that he'd understood everything up to that point. "You may think of us as having no honour, but I hope you can accept that we have some professional pride in our abilities. Having made such an error, we now need to act to redeem ourselves." 

"Hmm. And what do you want of us? Or is this merely a warning to stay clear of your operation?" 

"If you have some idea of the exact location of AVALANCHE's headquarters, we would appreciate the information," I said evenly. "We know they're north of here, and not all that far from the city, but more accuracy would let us finish more quickly. Which would mean that I would be able to leave more quickly." 

"I will have one of my men show you a map. Although even then, you may find locating them difficult." It was hard for me to tell, with his facial hair in the way, whether Godo was smiling or frowning. I'd had that problem with Heidegger too, but old Shinra's pet idiot had been much more expressive than this man. 

"If you wish to send an observer along on this mission, I will allow it." It was an offer I'd decided on making while we'd been on the way here, and I was rewarded by seeing Godo's eyebrows jump in surprise. "You're doubtless aware that there has been . . . an upheaval in Shinra's administrative hierarchy recently," I continued. "The new Board of Directors disagrees with the old President's belligerent posture towards outside forces. As does President Pro Tem Tuesti." 

"You do not name him 'President' without modification. Therefore, I would assume that this . . . chosen direction . . . may be reversed at any time." 

"The old President nominated Vice President Rufus Shinra as his heir, and Rufus is currently missing." And I was under no orders not to divulge that information. Reeve, sensibly, hadn't even tried. And hadn't called a full board meeting that would have allowed Scarlet to argue about it. "Legally, however, he isn't dead until we find the body." Or created it by killing Rufus-Shenlong. There were reasons Veld had assigned Tseng to go to Cosmo Canyon rather than having him come here with us—the Wutainese Turk was the one person who might have been willing to step between Rufus and Masamune for reasons having nothing to do with orders. "Purely a technicality," I continued. "If Rufus tried to change things at this point, he would be . . . pressured to do otherwise." I touched Masamune's hilt, and Godo's eyes followed my motion. He was no fool. He knew what I was implying. 

"Hmm. Then—" 

" _You!_ It's you! He's that stinky Shinra guy!" 

A . . . child? I frowned. Godo did have a daughter, born mere months before the beginning of the war. The infant had been considered a target of opportunity for kidnapping or elimination at that time, but no one had ever succeeded in laying a hand on her. I had forgotten about her until Vincent's report on his mission to Wutai. The child who had just appeared on the dais did seem to be about the right age, and she was wearing the trappings of an apprentice ninja, although she had no weapons. Also, she was pointing straight at Vincent, who stared calmly back at her without otherwise moving a muscle. 

"My apologies, Godo-sama." A female ninja stepped onto the dais from behind, and grabbed the girl, who promptly kicked out and spun away. The woman got another grip and brought her up short. 

"Ow! Sachiko, let me _go_!" The child's protest was ignored. 

"Yuffie, I have told you before that you are not to interrupt such audiences as these," Godo said sternly. "Sachiko . . . is that man at General Sephiroth's side the one who protected my daughter?" 

The female ninja nodded. "He is, Godo-sama. There is no mistaking him." 

No, there wasn't, was there? Vincent was . . . distinctive. Unique. 

"You are?" Godo said. 

"Vincent Valentine, SOLDIER First Class. You honour me, Godo-sama." Vincent gave a half-bow, more of a heavy inclination of the head and shoulders, without rising. His accent, which I knew to be feigned, was a perfect imitation of those of other SOLDIERs I knew who had learned the language later in life. 

"I am the one who is honoured to meet such a brave fighter." 

"I did nothing more than I was assigned to do." 

"I disagree, for you surely were not assigned to fetch back my wayward daughter intact." Godo glanced at where Yuffie was still fighting Sachiko and trying to get the woman to let go of her, and his entire expression softened. "And now you will say that any man would have done the same," the Lord of Wutai continued, turning back to us. 

Vincent shook his head. "We both know that is not true. Compassion is one of the first things that becomes lost when the times turn dark." Godo, of course, wasn't aware of how he'd used the girl, and Vincent wasn't enough of a fool to let it slip. 

I wondered if Vincent's orders had ever put him in the position of having to kill a child. As a sniper, he would have specialized in surgical strikes, hitting no one but his target, and what I knew of the secret history of the Shinra Electric Power Corporation suggested the rot had been further below the surface in the days when he had been an active Turk. 

I had certainly killed children. Not out of intent, exactly, but I had used materia in circumstances under which it was inevitable that civilians would end up as collateral damage, and my feelings about those I had killed in that way didn't differ according to the age of the victims. I might have been born without the related instincts, or they might have been stunted or destroyed by my upbringing. There was no way to tell. 

"Nevertheless, Wutai owes you some small debt," Godo was saying. 

"Then I ask that you balance the scales by cooperating with us for the duration of this mission," Vincent said. 

Godo gave him a long, thoughtful look. Vincent remained unmoved. 

The Lord of Wutai dipped his head. "It shall be so. Staniv, please give the General and his men what information we have about AVALANCHE's headquarters." 

"Yes, Godo-sama. This way, General." Staniv, a young ninja wearing a headband, gestured toward a door near the dais end of the room. I rose to my feet and followed him out. Behind me, I heard Veld mutter about not being as young as he used to be as he lurched to his feet. 

Staniv (which had to be a codename, since it wasn't even phonetically possible in Wutainese) was as good as Godo's word. Within fifteen minutes, we had not only a location, but some idea of the defenses and level of staffing at the remote mountain fort that AVALANCHE had taken over. Afterwards, we were quietly escorted out of the palace. 

We were halfway back to the edge of town when I felt someone get closer to us than the edge of the twelve-foot zone of isolation the Wutainese had been leaving around us so far. It took considerable effort to keep my hand off Masamune's hilt. I ended up clenching my fingers around the protomateria that still rode in my pocket. 

"Vincent-dono?" A woman's voice. Vaguely familiar . . . Ah. The female ninja who had been acting as the Kisaragi girl's escort. We turned slowly to face her. This time, she wasn't wrestling the heir to Wutai. 

"Sachiko-san, was it?" Vincent asked. 

"Yes. I am sorry for disturbing you, but if possible, I would like to speak to you privately for a moment." The ninja bowed both before and after speaking, almost ridiculously apologetic. 

Vincent glanced at me. I shrugged. The chances of someone slitting my throat between here and the entrance to the Shinra base were so low as to be a joke, and the ninja might be a useful contact at some point. The anger I felt at the thought of him being alone with the woman was illogical, and therefore acting on it was unacceptable. 

It was Veld who said, "We'll see you back at the base, then." 

Vincent nodded and fell in with Sachiko. They disappeared around a corner. 

I was not, I told myself, going to worry about Vincent being ambushed by the remnants of the Crescent Unit. The worst—the _absolute_ worst—they would be able to do was let Chaos loose for a little while. Surely. 

Back at the base, I forced myself to work on developing a plan of attack. We had some records of the fort AVALANCHE had taken over, as it had been a rear defensive position for the Wutainese during the war. The northern mountains of Wutai, like the Nibel range, had passes through them that had never been improved for motor travel, but were usable on foot during the warmer seasons, and this fort had been built to guard one of them. If it had been earlier in the year, I might even have considered approaching it from the north on chocobo back, but midway through October was late enough that there might be some snow in the high passes. I didn't want to risk it. 

The fort's outer defenses were from the pre-artillery era, and according to Staniv's information, they hadn't been improved much. The walls had deep footings to keep them secure against sappers and Quake spells, but a round of HESH shells should be able to make some nice holes in them. Take out whoever came to block the breaches, ideally with Sleepel, but if they were carrying Reflect spells or other defenses, we'd resort to shooting them. Once we'd dealt with the first wave, or they'd been forced to close, it would be my turn, and Masamune's, while Vincent guarded my back and the Seconds and the Turks secured my line of retreat and picked off any strays. 

Before we staged the actual attack, we were going to have to block the back door, though. The fort was built over a small cave complex, which had two other exits large enough for a human being. Fortunately, Rude's area of specialization was explosives, so we shouldn't have too hard a time bringing down some extra rock to close those off. 

As plans went, it wasn't especially complicated, but the leaders of AVALANCHE had no training in military tactics. At best, they were spies and saboteurs. And really, I wouldn't have wanted to try to defend that fort myself. Dig some trenches outside, add fireproof cladding where I could, mount artillery on the walls, try to establish a decent field of fire, and hope the enemy didn't bring in air support capable of bombing the area from outside materia range, I suppose. If I hadn't been reasonably certain that Hojo would resist conventional munitions, I would have tried to bomb the place flat myself. It would have been the easiest way to take care of the problem. 

Contingency plans, then. If Elfe, Hojo, Genesis, or Shenlong came out to defend the breach in the wall . . . I would just have to go in a bit early. I'd given up on salvaging Rufus at this point, so Shenlong would get exactly the same treatment as the others. 

If Rude was interrupted while sealing the rear exits . . . It depended on whether he'd already gotten one, or was caught before blocking either. If he was completely unsuccessful, we'd withdraw, and hope that AVALANCHE would try to abandon the fort and we could take them out in the open. If he managed to get one exit and not the other, and couldn't deal with the interruption himself, Vincent and I would have to separate, with one of us going around the back. 

Hostages inside the fort . . . Probably not a risk. There didn't seem to be large numbers of Wutainese missing, and I wasn't planning on using area attacks. If it came up, ignore them and push through. I worked through several other scenarios until I couldn't come up with other possibilities that didn't sound somewhat silly, like Hojo creating a giant adamantoise and having it walk off with the fort on its back. I wouldn't put it completely outside the realm of possibility that Hojo could do such a thing, but I knew it would take him more than a couple of days. 

I sighed and leaned back in the desk chair I was currently occupying. The room I had been given in the Wutai base officers' quarters was about the same size as the one I occupied back in Midgar, but much more heavily furnished. A small sitting area with an entertainment center, the desk, and at the very back, a bed large enough for three of me. It felt . . . odd. Granted, my room in Midgar was spare in part because it made it more difficult for the Turks to plant bugs there, but also because I had never felt any need for luxury. What would I do with it? It would only make me soft. Although being surrounded by beautiful things would be . . . pleasing, in some sense, and I was certainly capable of aesthetic appreciation. Perhaps I should take my cue from the land in which I now found myself. Native Wutainese decor at its best was spare, elegant, and appealing, all at once. 

I might add a few Wutainese elements to my room when I got back simply to amuse myself with the impression it conveyed to others. How shocking would they find it, to see the conqueror adopt the ways of the conquered? Genesis would have approved, no doubt. He'd often claimed that I was downright dull when I wasn't either killing things or training for same. 

I hadn't been encouraged to develop hobbies during my childhood in the labs, and I had gone straight from there to SOLDIER and the war. In the two years since the war had ended, I had had to deal with AVALANCHE, Angeal and Genesis deserting, Angeal's death, Hojo's madness, Jenova, enough monsters to choke a king behemoth, and endless piles of paperwork. All of that hadn't left much room for amusement or self-discovery. Perhaps after this was over, I should experiment a bit. Zack would no doubt have a thousand and one ideas, all bad, about what I should try. Cloud might be a more useful source of suggestions. Or Vincent. 

Where was he? I had specified that he be assigned the room next to my own, but I hadn't heard that door open. He hadn't been there when Veld had knocked at his door to ask him to join us at supper. Had he ever returned from the town? I could have called the gate guards to ask, or tried to track his PHS—I'd insisted on setting up enough towers, right after the war, that the area around the capital had sufficient reception to allow triangulation. Vincent being Vincent, he probably wouldn't even have considered it a breach of trust the way Zack would have. 

And yet, something was holding me back. Some part of me didn't want to know where he was. Whether that woman had wanted more from him than just conversation. An image of the two of them embracing flickered across my mind's eye, and I clenched my hands into fists, hard enough to make the leather of my gloves creak, as the image made some deep-buried part of me rage. _How dare you give such affection to anyone else but me?_

This emotion, dark and bright, this irrational madness that made me want to possess the quiet ex-Turk in every way . . . surely it had a name. But I shied away from admitting it. Giving that name voice would have meant giving the emotion power, and I didn't dare. I didn't . . . _I don't want to hurt him._ Vincent had already given me everything of himself except a few irrelevant emotional scraps. It was hopelessly greedy of me to want more, especially when there were things he had to want that I couldn't properly reciprocate. 

The memory of kissing him in front of Scarlet flashed through my mind again. The flavour of him, the faint scent of arousal that had clung to him even after we'd parted again. That, above all, had been what had triggered these mad urges. 

The lock on my door suddenly clicked, even though I hadn't heard anyone in the hall. There was only one person that could be . . . and sure enough, when it swung open, Vincent stepped through silently. 

I was on my feet and walking towards him before I even realized I was moving. The ex-Turk raised an eyebrow as he let the door fall shut behind him, but otherwise, he stayed motionless, watching me until I stopped less than an arm's length from him. 

"I was starting to wonder where you were." Neutral words, or at least I tried to make them that way. I wasn't sure how well I succeeded. I was picking up not just the smell of mako-behemoth-gun oil- _Vincent_ , but also everything he had come into contact with since we'd parted ways, as though my senses had been scraped raw. A women, a man, a child. Food and tea, made in the Wutainese style. Incense and oiled wood and lacquer and road dust. 

"The little princess wanted to talk to me. Are you all right?" 

_Yes. No. I think I'm losing my mind._ "I don't know." 

"Sephiroth . . ." The way he said my name plucked at something inside me, and I found myself leaning forward, my right hand flat against the wall behind him. 

_I think . . . I think . . ._

Our eyes met, and deep down in the depths of the red glow, I saw a spark of all-consuming hunger. 

I leaned in further. 

For the second time, our lips met. 

_Yes. This._ If I couldn't escape the madness, I would jump straight in, and see if he was willing to follow me here, too.


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW chapter. If you're not interested in that, you probably want to duck out around the point where Genesis' name comes up.

**Vincent**

I had expected Sachiko to stop the moment we were out of earshot of Sephiroth and Veld, but instead we continued walking for almost ten minutes, stopping at last in front of a small, but elegant, teahouse. 

"'Privately'? 'For a moment'?" I quoted, raising an eyebrow. 

She lowered her head. "I am sorry, Vincent-dono. I did not think you would come if you knew it was the princess' request." 

Of course. Little Yuffie. "Better that I talk to her here than give her an excuse to try to break into the Shinra base." 

"She—" Sachiko began, then stopped. "She would," she admitted, with a rueful smile. "She has no fear, that one. Despite everything, or perhaps because of it." 

_Definitely because of it,_ I thought, gesturing for the ninja to lead on. Had Wutai still been what it was before the war, Yuffie would never have been Godo's heir, or permitted to appear in public as a ninja. Some near male relative would have been chosen as heir instead, and the girl would have been groomed for marriage into one of the other noble families . . . but no male Kisaragi of the right generation had survived, according to the intelligence the Turks had collected. It was Yuffie or no one, and at least the girl had courage. 

Inside, the teahouse was decorated in a subtle traditional style. It had a garden courtyard at the center, and the paper screens that formed the inner wall were all open to it. 

Sachiko led me to a small pagoda at the center of the garden, which contained many cushions, a low table laid out for tea, and a bouncing Yuffie, currently being restrained by the male ninja who had been with Sachiko when I'd met her on my earlier mission—Masato, that was it. 

"You Shinra guys are always so _slow_ ," she complained. 

"My apologies, Yuffie-sama, but they were nearly out of town when I caught up with them," Sachiko said as we both sank to the cushions. Sachiko poured tea for me and the girl, then splashed a small amount in a third cup and drank it herself to test for poison. Of course, if they had put the poison there themselves, she might have taken an antidote in advance, but my bizarre metabolism was unlikely to be vulnerable to normal toxins anyway. 

"Why did you wish to speak to me, Princess?" I took a single sip of the tea, for politeness, before setting it down again. 

"I wanted . . ." she started, then stopped. I waited patiently until she blurted out, "I kind of . . . wanted to say thank you. I shouldn't have gone out there with practice weapons. You were right—it was stupid. I should have stolen something better first. And some materia." 

"Yuffie-sama . . ." Sachiko said, in despairing tones. Masato looked like he was trying hard not to laugh. 

"Anyway, they're letting me practice with real stuff now, thanks to what you said. So I'm . . . grateful." The princess of Wutai looked down and away from me, and blushed just a little. "Just don't ask me to like that stinky general of yours," she added in a voice I think she thought was too soft for me to hear. 

I picked up my teacup and took another sip. "Sephiroth didn't start the war," I said quietly. "When they sent him here, he wasn't much older than you are now, Yuffie-hime. He had no say in who he was fighting. If Shinra tried to start another war now, I doubt he would go along with it. He isn't an evil person. I don't expect you to like him, but he doesn't deserve your hatred." 

Sachiko looked surprised, Masato thoughtful, and Yuffie herself was scowling at nothing, but maybe I had made her think a little. I hoped so. Sephiroth might eventually have to work with this girl, and it would be much easier if she wasn't dead set against him. 

I stayed and finished the tea—politeness, again—but what little additional conversation we had was banal. Old training nevertheless made me do my best to remember every nuance, just in case something turned out to be significant later on. 

Afterwards, I bought food at a street stall, one less dubious than the one I'd chosen the last time I was in Wutai . . . had it only been last week? My sense of time was more than a little out of joint these days. 

People stared at me as I ate—unsurprising, given the uniform I still wore. Children whispered and giggled, daring each other to run up and touch my leg or my gun. A simple look was enough to quell any who seemed to be getting too bold. Still, without Sephiroth, the empty space around me was much smaller. It was clear that even now, two years after the end of the war, the people of Wutai were terrified of Lucrecia's son. 

It was too bad, really. Sephiroth, from what I'd seen of him, probably would have liked Wutai if it hadn't been for the massive amount of bad blood between him and these people. A warrior of his skill would have been respected here and treated with true deference, not the mockery of it that Shinra gave him. 

I would have liked to take him on vacation somewhere that no one would recognize him, now that I thought about it. Except that there was no such place anywhere on the Planet. Picking someplace with no people at all might work, but . . . well. Once this was over, I'd have to ask him what he thought of the idea. 

My guess was that he'd never even considered taking a vacation of any kind. Being _the_ SOLDIER, both the head of the division and the single most effective fighter on the Planet, was the kind of job that expanded to take over whatever time you had to give it, and then some. 

I followed the road back to the base without any particular hurry. It was getting on toward sunset, and the sky was splashed with bright reds and oranges and golds. Even the fences and squat cinderblock buildings in the background couldn't make it any less than a beautiful evening. 

«You find pleasure in some of the most banal things,» Chaos commented waspishly. I ignored it with the expertise of long practice. 

I walked in through the front gate this time, flashing my ID at the guard—although given how few First Classes there were, I doubted anyone would be foolish enough to try to impersonate one. The guard saluted and waved me through, and I found my way to the officers' quarters and the rooms we'd be assigned—Veld, the captain in charge of the Second Classes, Sephiroth, and myself. 

I should really have gone to my own room, but I found myself hesitating in the hallway. _This isn't like me._ In the old days, my night-before-the-mission ritual had involved cleaning my guns. All the ones I had on hand, even if I didn't intend to use them. It was a solitary pastime that could take hours. Veld had been the one who'd wanted company to take his mind off things—in fact, in some ways he'd been a bit like Reno, until Paula had snagged him and he had settled down. 

It wasn't my old partner's door that seemed to be pulling me in, though. _Sephiroth._ My current partner. My current obsession. 

I'd swiped my card through the reader before I'd fully realized I was doing it, and the lock clicked open, obeying the Turk clearances that could get me into almost any room in any Shinra facility, if I chose. Well. It didn't look like I had a choice now. 

Sephiroth had been sitting at a desk, but he rose to his feet as I entered, and I found myself watching every ripple of muscle as he stalked toward me. I had yet to see him wear a shirt, and he had left his long coat folded over the back of a sofa, so his upper body was bare. 

"I was starting to wonder where you were," he said, and I could see his nostrils flare as green eyes searched my face. Having been enhanced all his life, he could no doubt pull a great deal of information from scent alone. I was still learning to identify individual people that way, never mind anything more detailed. 

"The little princess wanted to talk to me." There was something about his expression, about the burning mako green of his eyes . . . "Are you all right?" 

"I don't know." He sounded puzzled. Even a little frightened. 

"Sephiroth . . ." 

He was leaning in closer, with his right hand against the wall. Boxing me in. It felt like an attempt to intimidate. It felt . . . far too much like some of the dreams I'd had of him. And my body was reacting to it. 

He leaned in closer, until I could feel his breath against my cheekbone. And then closer, until his lips covered mine. Not a practiced kiss. I'd noticed that before, as well. That he had no idea what he was doing. Our teeth would have clashed if I hadn't taken over, arms sliding around him and gathering him closer to me. 

His hair was just as silken as I remembered, where it lapped against my arm. 

We parted slowly, and spent a long moment silently staring at each other. His eyes burned into mine as I shifted my grip slowly lower. Somehow I managed to stop myself before I grabbed his ass and pulled him in even closer, although my body was screaming at me for more contact. I just wanted to grind against him until I came, but . . . I didn't think it would quite have qualified as rape, but it would still have felt wrong. 

His left hand rose to cup the side of my face as he spoke again. "I think I really am losing my mind. I have no right, and I have nothing to offer you, but the thought of anyone else touching you makes me feel like I want to rip them apart." 

_I made a mistake,_ I realized, my eyes still locked with burning mako green. _We_ both _made a mistake. Even if he's physically incapable of sex, and I'm not entirely sure at this point whether he is or Hojo just messed him up so much that he_ thinks _he is . . . that still doesn't mean he's incapable of desire._

I licked my lips. I could still taste him. "Then I won't let anyone else touch me," I said slowly. "Not that I would have considered it anyway. You've been the one I wanted all along." 

"Even if I can't . . ." Uncertain. Almost pleading. It felt so wrong to hear him sound that way. 

"Even if you can't." I made sure that my voice was firm. "I'd rather have what you _can_ give me than sleep with anyone else on the Planet. Didn't I tell you already? _You're the reason I'm here._ " 

I felt the slight shiver running through him, but the next words he spoke were harsh. "I don't want to be your atonement. I know you still feel guilty over your inability to stop Hojo from using me. If that's the only reason—" 

"No!" It might have been the first time I'd raised my voice since I'd left that coffin. We both jerked in surprise. "I've been falling for you practically from the first moment we met. I've been trying not to bother you about it, because I didn't want to put you under more stress than you were already dealing with. I never expected you to reciprocate my feelings. Why would you? You deserve someone who doesn't remind you of Hojo, at least." Bitter, bitter words. Why did the truth always have to taste that way? 

"And just who, other than another one of his victims, could ever possibly understand why I am what I am? Why would I bond with someone who expects me to be human?" Ironically, his emotional state and the lack of light in the room had made his pupils dilate until they were almost perfectly round. 

"You seemed content to be alone." A bit clinical, perhaps, but nonetheless the truth. 

"Mm. I suppose I give that impression. It's difficult to form relationships when you've spent your life with someone leaning over your shoulder who has no scruples whatsoever about using the people around you as leverage. It's safer to keep everyone at arm's length. I can count on one hand the number of people I've ever let past my defenses . . . and now one of them is dead, and we may end up killing one of the others tomorrow." 

_Genesis,_ I realized. _Damn him._ "This isn't the time to think about that." 

"No," he breathed. "No, it isn't." His fingers meandered across my throat, following the top edge of my collar. "Could we . . . ?" A hesitation. A deep breath. Then his confidence seemed to reassert itself. "I want to see you. All of you." 

"Only if I get to see all of you," I said, allowing myself a faint smirk as my erection, which had been flagging, came back full-force. 

"Agreed." 

We moved further into the room. Standing by the little grouping of a sofa and two armchairs in front of the television, I took off my gloves. Then the wide SOLDIER-issue belt. Then my shirt. Ironically, I might have felt less naked if I had dropped my pants, but . . . let him see. Let him see everything, and decide whether he'd made a poor bargain before this went any further. 

His eyes weren't even on me when I was done. Instead, he was looking down as he slowly and methodically removed his gloves. His hands were long-fingered and graceful, the nails neatly trimmed. The number and bar code tattooed on the back of the right one looked almost obscene in such a setting. 

Only when he had placed his gloves neatly on the back of the nearest chair did he raise his head again and look at me. Slowly, he reached out and placed his left hand over my heart, where the scars were thickest. Just that touch shouldn't have been enough to make me gasp, but it did. 

"Sorry you have to make do with a used model," I said—half-sarcastic, half-embarrassed. 

"By all rights, I should have just as many scars as you," Sephiroth said. "The war wasn't kind to me, that way. But I heal too well. At least your body is honest." 

"Not really," I said. "There's nothing honest about being fifty and looking exactly like I did at twenty-eight." 

"Perhaps not." He bent down to unbuckle his boots. "But I like it anyway," he told the floor. 

This . . . wasn't a striptease, I reflected as I toed my own boots off. Not even an impromptu, mutual one. This was . . . other. Something that I had no capacity to explain. Another tearing away of masks, perhaps, this one visual instead of verbal. 

Sephiroth's hands went to his waist, and I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, as he peeled the leather down. There was nothing underneath except pale skin and a dusting of silver hair. His legs were as perfectly muscled as the torso I had already seen so many times, hard and rippling. His cock was long and thick . . . and half-hard, which gave me a bit of hope. It might take a long time, but perhaps someday . . . 

He was looking at me, green eyes grave. _Right, my turn._ I had to take my holsters off first, both the one that strapped Cerberus to my thigh and the backup tucked up against my spine that held the old Quicksilver. I laid the guns carefully aside, then stripped the last of my clothes off with a single quick motion. I was much more than half-hard, but that didn't appear to bother him. Instead, he put his hands on me again, running them over my ribcage. 

"You're too thin," he said. "We'll have to do something to fix that." 

I shook my head. "I've always had trouble keeping weight on. It wasn't even anything Hojo did to me, just my own genes and metabolism." I reached out with my good hand and ran it down his flank, feeling velvet skin over muscle harder than sword-steel. 

Sephiroth took my other hand, the mangled and malformed one. Looking me straight in the eye, he kissed it, then placed it on his chest, holding it there for a moment. A silent message that could not be misunderstood: _you can touch me, even with this._ And perhaps even, _please touch me._

I ran my fingers slowly through his hair, starting at the shoulders and continuing all the way down past his waist, feeling silken strands catch on roughened skin, on scars, on the black nails of my monstrous left hand. I doubted I would ever be able to get enough of that hair. Sephiroth . . . seemed to be mapping my scars, running his fingers lightly over my skin in a way that almost tickled as he searched for the ones so faint they could no longer be seen. Shackle scars, knife marks, burns, bullet holes . . . The life of a Turk is anything but safe. Although we had always gotten the best medical treatment money could buy. 

He started from my upper arms and shoulders, but gradually worked his way lower, until he was cupping my buttocks in his hands, and pulling my body against his as I had wanted to do earlier. He didn't seem to mind when I thrust slowly against him, grinding my erection into his groin. 

He nipped lightly at my ear, and I tilted my head, giving him access to the side of my neck. 

«A proper offering to the superior predator,» Chaos murmured inside my head. «You really _are_ letting him dominate you. Just like you do in your mad little dreams.» 

Hearing my private demon's voice in my head should have been the most unarousing thing possible, but if anything, it just made the molten heat settle deeper into the pit of my stomach. I groaned and thrust harder against him as Sephiroth scraped his teeth down the length of my neck. _Gods,_ this . . . this was . . . 

His hand slid down between us, and I felt exploratory fingers on my erection, then a gentle grip, closing. It was just a hand job, and a clumsy one at that, but it felt as though it was lighting my entire body on fire as Sephiroth slowly began to stroke me from base to tip. I was so hypersensitized, I would have sworn I could feel every line of his fingerprints. 

"Don't you dare stop," I said as he hesitated half a second too long between strokes, and something flashed, deep down in those green eyes. 

"I won't." His voice had become a low, velvet purr. Just as it had been in all those dreams. It made me ache with a sudden, startling desire to be penetrated. Not usually my first choice of sex acts when I was with another man, but my fantasies about him seemed to revolve around it. 

Well. We could work up to it—with toys, if we couldn't find a way to make his flesh respond. Right now, though . . . right now . . . I could feel my muscles tensing, thighs and buttocks and across my stomach, as my balls started to tighten as well. Every little motion of his fingers was sending shocks of pleasure through my body as I grasped his shoulders, pressing my chest against his. I felt him nip at the skin right at the base of my neck—not quite hard enough to draw blood, although I almost wished he would. It might have . . . might have . . . 

"I'm close," I warned him. It came out as a half-strangled gasp. 

"That's the whole point, isn't it?" His marked hand tangled in my hair, pulled my head back so that our eyes could meet again. He was smiling that minimal smile of his as he asked, "Do you have any idea what you look like right now, Vincent?" 

"I can guess." Flushed, eyes liquid, pupils blown wide . . . arousal was one of the things I'd been drilled in spotting, all those years ago when I'd been training as a Turk, because it was a highly exploitable emotion. 

"You're beautiful. Scars and all." His hand squeezed my cock. "Now. Come for me." 

I didn't need any further urging. My body let go and splattered whiteness across his stomach and thighs in a release so powerful that it almost hurt, while a quiet moan forced its way between my lips. His eyes stayed locked on mine as I spasmed and, briefly, whited out. 

Afterwards, he kissed my forehead softly as I leaned against him, catching my breath. 

"I didn't expect this to be so easy," he muttered, and I almost laughed. 

"It's that voice of yours," I admitted. "I think you could make me come just by talking to me in those tones." 

"Perhaps we should try it sometime." Was that a glint of mischief I saw in those green, green eyes? "I never thought what I found in that one lab technician's collection of pornography would prove to be so useful," he added, and then I did laugh. Quietly, and rather rusty-sounding, but it was the first time . . . since Lucrecia had refused me, probably. 

"Let's get cleaned up so I can get back to my own room . . . or if you would prefer, I can stay here," I added, seeing the faintest of frowns cross his face. 

"Stay. Please." 

"You only have to ask." I pushed silver hair away from his face with my good hand, and gave him a light, chaste kiss. _I love you._

I didn't think it was time for those words quite yet, that he'd be able to deal with them, but they were true nonetheless. I loved him. Lucrecia's brilliant, damaged, magnificent son.


	55. Chapter 55

**Rufus**

"You have no idea, do you?" Genesis drawled. "Corporate politicking, you can do." He pointed at me. "Sneaky hit-and-run attacks, _you_ can do." He flicked his hand at the spot where Elfe and Fuhito sat, with Shears standing behind them. "And psychological attacks . . . well, it goes without saying, doesn't it?" He nodded in the direction of Hojo's mottled and misshapen labcoat. 

Hojo was looking worse and worse. The side of his face was stained blue-grey now, like some kind of noxious birthmark, his shoulders were hunched so high they flanked his jaw, and it seemed like there was always something moving underneath his clothes—tentacles, maybe. He'd clearly lost his gamble with whatever substance he'd injected into himself and was mutating. I wasn't about to shed any tears about that. It served the slimeball right. And he seemed less bothered about it than I would have expected, although his temper was increasingly volatile. 

" _However_ ," Genesis was saying, " _I_ am the only one here who is trained in military strategy. And I know how Sephiroth goes about his job better than any of you ever will. He's thorough and systematic without being blandly by-the-book. He _will_ attack. He will attack _soon_ , and with overwhelming force, because he _is_ an overwhelming force by any sane standard. I expect him to show up first thing in the morning, block the exits, bomb the wall, and walk straight in. He will have Chaos at his side, and possibly the Puppy as well. We need to disperse the non-combatants _now_. Tonight. And then we need to come up with a plan to hold him off for as long as we can. Since we're obviously not ready to take on Chaos yet. We need to make certain that Sephiroth doesn't notice your _other_ project—whatever it is—before it's ready." 

"We can handle Sephiroth." Elfe wasn't the most talkative person I had ever met. Then again, she always looked like she'd been without sleep for the past three days. Except that I knew she spent most of her time sleeping. She was clearly ill, maybe even dying, and sometimes when she moved she did so in an odd, uncoordinated way that had made me wonder if she wasn't an unsuccessful fusion, with more than one mind rattling around inside her. But when I had flashed an identification gesture at her, one that any Immortalis except Chaos would have recognized, she hadn't responded. That might have been on purpose, of course, but . . . well. Not enough evidence. I needed to gather more. 

"No, sweetie, you only _think_ you can handle Sephiroth," Genesis said. "You only managed as well as you did the one time you crossed swords with him because you surprised him, and then ran away before he could gather himself. I've been watching you for a while now, remember? You start out well, but you have no stamina whatsoever. You were no match for me even while I had a damaged shoulder making it impossible for me to move freely. Your record was three minutes. That's how long he needs to spend fending you off before he can make a guaranteed kill. If he even bothers to do more than just slap your sword out of the way. When it comes to pure swordplay, Sephiroth is _better_ than I am." He said it with a disgusted expression. 

The Genesis I remembered would never have admitted even such a tiny inadequacy. Maybe fusing with Susano-o had been good for him. 

I felt the familiar pang of pain as my old friend's name crossed my mind. _Tseng. I need Tseng. When all this is over . . ._

It wouldn't be over until Chaos' host was dead and the Harbinger was discarnate again. Which, given how much sheer _power_ the thing had, was going to be a lot of work. 

"He was impressed when I crossed blades with him," Elfe said, looking down. Behind her, Shears was bristling. 

"And that means he won't underestimate you next time," Genesis said. "Sephiroth loves finding someone who can stand up to him, even if it's only for a few seconds. He's combat-obsessed, with no other hobbies whatsoever." 

"Can we get to the point?" I asked. I was willing to tolerate Genesis changing the subject up to a point, but if Sephiroth really was going to show up tomorrow morning, we needed to decide on a course of action _now_. 

"Really, if we're agreed on evacuating the non-combatants, it's just a matter of choosing who stays behind to block Sephiroth and who moves on to the new base." Genesis did love hearing himself talk. 

"And you've already formed an opinion," I said. Shears gave me a disgusted look. He hadn't thought a mere _financial backer_ like me should even be at this conference. Watching me manage Genesis was apparently annoying him even more. 

"Mmm. I think Elfe and I should stay. Shears, if he wishes. You and the scientists should move on. You're the ones needed for the main plan." 

Shears frowned. So did Elfe. They hadn't been in on the _main plan_. Fuhito was frowning too, although not for the same reason. 

"Elfe is part of the _backup plan,_ you imbecile," Hojo snapped, slamming his hand against the table. "Although I suppose I should expect no better of Heidegger's trash." 

_What backup plan?_ If there was one, no one had ever discussed it with me. Genesis, Shears, and Elfe herself looked equally confused. Fuhito looked smug, which could have meant he knew about this _backup plan_ too. Or it could just have meant he was good at pretending. 

Hojo looked snarly, and the movements under his lab coat were becoming more agitated. It wasn't pleasant to watch. 

"I suppose that means I stay here alone with the Ravens," Genesis said, with a sigh. "Oh, joy." 

_We could have you stay here alone with Hojo. Would you like that better?_ The part of me that was still Rufus was good at not giving any hint of what I was thinking, thankfully. Genesis was one of the most irritating men I had ever met . . . although in some ways, he was also the easiest of the three top SOLDIER Firsts to understand. Being jealous of Sephiroth was something we had in common. 

Mako green eyes . . . poison green eyes. I still didn't understand how a laboratory-experiment-turned-SOLDIER had become the public face of Shinra, the image everyone thought of when the corporation crossed their minds. Unless it had been a ploy by my father to deflect the less-pleasant aspects of public opinion away from him. Yes, that sounded like him. 

"Whatever you do, don't tell them where we're moving to," Fuhito was saying. "We're going to need a few days to set everything up. After that, it won't matter, of course." 

"Remind me again why I had to go to Midgar to invite Sephiroth here," Genesis said lazily, but with an annoyed expression that didn't match his tone. 

"Because we needed to keep his attention _here_ for a few more days, rather than risk him picking up on what's going on elsewhere," Fuhito said. "He would have shown up here within the next little while in any case. After all, the Turks knew all along we were in Wutai, and that meant Sephiroth did too. I admit that I'd hoped Godo would stonewall him for a couple of days—unfortunate that SOLDIER rescued his daughter—" 

"Vincent Valentine is not a SOLDIER," Hojo ground out. "He is a subhuman abomination _that woman_ patched together because she couldn't bear to see her lover's son die." 

Fuhito held up a hand. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I misspoke. Regardless, it seems that my countermeasures will have to wait until after the move." 

"What countermeasures?" It was a good thing Genesis asked, since this was also the first I had heard about this. 

"Well . . . General Sephiroth, as you know, has few psychological vulnerabilities, and those he does have are difficult to exploit without a great deal of planning and preparatory work. However, the only other remaining true SOLDIER First Class, Major Zack Fair, is not nearly so impervious. And he has a girlfriend." 

"A hostage?" Genesis sneered. "You're wasting your time. _At most_ , you might get the Puppy to go on a rampage and force Sephiroth to skewer him. I doubt our dear General would even hesitate. He's as cold-blooded as they come." 

"The idea is to have Fair feed him bad information," Fuhito said. "Have him chase his tail for a little while, until we're ready to handle Chaos. Lead him into traps. Plus, well, the girl _is_ a Cetra. The last true, natural Cetra. We may end up needing her." 

Hojo started going on a rant about how his work was better than the true, original strain. I didn't bother staying while Fuhito tried to shut him up. Everything had been pretty much decided, and I was tired of dealing with these idiots. 

For all that it was a Wutainese historical landmark, the fort had surprisingly modern plumbing. I slipped into the nearest bathroom and splashed my face with some water. My eyelids felt like they had sandbags weighing them down, but if I was going to be evacuating, there was no time now for sleep. 

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and frowned. Not only because there were bags under my eyes, but my face looked too thin, and was my hair really supposed to be that colour? Not to mention that it was getting too long. And if I looked closely enough at my own eyes, I could see a faint mako corona lightening the blue, courtesy of Hojo. 

I didn't look the way Rufus Shinra was supposed to look. Not quite. I couldn't entirely understand the reason that pissed me off. 

_Why am I here? I should go back to Shinra, but . . . Chaos and . . . Sephiroth . . ._ With my father dead, the green-eyed devil was probably in control of the company. Probably. I had so little information about what was going on outside. I wanted my Turks, damn it all! Without them, I felt like I was trying to operate deaf and blind. I wanted Tseng. 

I almost clawed my hands down the sides of my face. Yes, I wanted Tseng. And Dark Nation. And my own clothes and my shotgun and some semblance of normality and even my bastard of a father. 

I looked in the mirror again, and for an instant it seemed to show me a different image, with wavy black hair and a narrow, tanned face and tilted Wutainese eyes that held all the colours of the ocean, topped off with a crystal circlet and pearl earrings. Shenlong. His original body . . . my true appearance . . . No! Not mine! Never mine! 

I struck the mirror with a shaking hand, and it cracked, but didn't quite shatter. The face looking back at me was pale, with golden hair. 

I was losing my mind. I just wasn't sure _which_ of them I was losing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, Hojo does know Lucretia was originally sleeping with Grimoire Valentine. And he's jealous.


	56. Chapter 56

**Zack**

Dawn over Cosmo Canyon was really something. All of that red stone picked up hints of gold and purple from the sky, and it was just so gorgeous that I snapped a picture with my PHS to show to Kunsel. And maybe even to Seph. 

Aerith wasn't awake yet. She'd had a late night last night, and we'd slept in separate beds. I . . . well . . . I had to admit that I'd dozed off yesterday while Bugenhagen had been talking to her. I mean, I'm not good with abstract stuff, and she was the one who would need to understand it, not me. She'd feed anything I absolutely needed to know back to me in bite-sized chunks when the time came. She was good at that. 

I wasn't entirely used to being up at the crack of dawn, but I was still on Midgar time, and it was two hours earlier here, so it _felt_ more like breakfast time. Since there didn't seem to be anyone outside, I thought it might be a good time to get my sword practice for the day in without scaring anyone. Seph did that sometimes, when we were on a mission, dancing with Masamune in light that dyed that hair of his a kind of orangy-pink. Reno had tried to dye it that colour for real once, by tampering with the shower in Seph's private bathroom, but the dye hadn't taken for some reason, so all he'd gotten was a pissed-off Seph riding his ass for a couple of weeks. Seph's hair was weird. Angeal had told me once that part of the reason he didn't cut it was that it blunted ordinary scissors. 

Anyway, I knew I wasn't nearly as pretty to watch. The Buster Sword is heavy, and my style's always been more about force than grace and finesse. Cloud, though . . . it was still early days for him, and he wasn't completely acclimated to having mako yet, but now and then I'd seen a flash of something when I watched him spar. Seph had been right: little Spiky was going to be a force to reckon with, if he kept working this hard. 

Fighting with a heavy sword is all about momentum. You have to use the weight to your advantage, and bring the sword around in arcs instead of expecting to be able to stop it dead and reverse direction. I mean, I _could_ do that a few times, or even a few dozen times, but it wasted energy I could use to keep going longer. 

I killed a lot of shadows that morning. Hey, they make good targets when the sun's low in the sky like that. And the ones by that fire—the Cosmo Candle, they called it—were even better, because of the way they flickered around. More of a challenge. I was sweaty and breathing hard by the time I put the sword back up across my back. 

I'd been kind of peripherally aware for a while that there was someone watching me practice, but since they hadn't seemed interested in interrupting me—or running away in terror—I'd ignored both the feeling and the occasional glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I'd expected it to be Aerith, or maybe Cloud. That was, until I stopped and turned around and saw a whole bunch of Turk-uniform blue. 

I wasn't sure Tseng had slept at all last night. He had big, dark circles under his eyes, even though his hair and clothes were immaculate. 

"What is it with Turks and sneaking up on people, anyway?" I asked. "You're a lot better at it than Reno, though." 

I wasn't expecting an answer, so I was kind of surprised when Tseng said, "It's good practice. Although it seldom works on SOLDIERs. You always seem to detect us once we get within a certain radius, unless you're extremely preoccupied with something else." 

I shrugged. "You breathe, you have a heartbeat, you have body odour. Even if you wash really thoroughly in advance and start holding your breath once you get close, your heart isn't going to stop. That means any experienced SOLDIER is always gonna to be able to hear you coming." 

"I see." 

"So, what has you up so early? Don't tell me you couldn't sleep either." 

Now Tseng shrugged. "I was intending to check on the helicopter before anyone else gets up. Although I suppose it isn't strictly necessary. Unless someone's removed the transponder, it's still where we left it." 

"And hopefully not covered with monsters." I wasn't _quite_ brave enough to tell Tseng about that one incident, years ago, when some kind of once-off monster had tried to hump a helicopter I was riding in, but it did pop into my head. 

"Mm." That was all Tseng said, if you could call it talking. He was about as conversational as Vince. If I hadn't known Reno and Cissnei, I might have thought all the Turks were like that. 

By the time I got tired of the silence (takes about ten seconds, usually), I'd come up with something maybe useful to ask. "Say, you don't happen to know where in this pile of rocks I can find a guy named Kiasutha? Seph wanted me to talk to him." Or rather, his name had been at the top of the list of alternative-energy researchers Seph had given me. 

"Dr. Kiasutha Seron?" Tseng said, eyebrows raised. 

"Sounds right," I said. "I'd have to go back inside and get the list to know for sure, and I don't want to wake Aerith. She didn't get to sleep until pretty late." 

"I can get his address and mark it on a map of the town for you, but isn't it a little too early to go visiting?" 

"Yeah, but I hate sitting still. Why don't we both go check the chopper?" I suggested. It was either that or run around exploring, and my sense of direction isn't the greatest. I was _not_ going to stand around outside the inn doing squats for two hours while I waited for Aerith to wake up. 

"Someone should stay behind to guard Miss Gainsborough." 

I blinked. "It almost sounds like you're more worried about her than I am. And that's a bit crazy, y'know? I mean, I don't think she's ever been _your_ girlfriend." Yeah, maybe I was a little bit jealous. I mean, he'd known her for years before I had, but . . . 

Tseng shook his head. "No, Miss Gainsborough and I have never been romantically inclined towards each other. However, I have spent a very long time watching over her. It isn't unusual for Turks on long assignments to become . . . improperly attached to their targets, and I . . . have not been holding myself at as much of a distance as I should. In a sense, she has become the younger sister that I never had." 

"I get the feeling that wouldn't keep you from, say, kidnapping her, though." And I didn't like that at all. 

"Kidnapping her . . . possibly not. Seriously harming her, however, would break me, and I am glad I've never had to choose between her and my duty." He said it with a poker face and a soft sigh. Scarily like how Seph would have said something similar, actually. I wondered if they were related. "Hojo" was a Wutainese kind of name, wasn't it? _File that under "questions even Zack Fair is never going to dare to ask"._

Instead, I sighed. "Okay, so. About one of us staying behind to protect Aerith. Don't you think that's a little insulting to her? I mean, she may not be a SOLDIER or a Turk, but she isn't _helpless_. There's no sign of Hojo here. Or of AVALANCHE or excessive monsters or anything else you might be worried about. And Cloud and Tifa are in the room right beside hers. They'll be okay for half an hour or so." 

"Actually, AVALANCHE was founded in Cosmo Canyon," Tseng said. But he also began to walk, and I followed him. 

"But they're not here anymore, right? They moved to Wutai?" 

The Turk nodded. "AVALANCHE's current leadership believes that the end justifies the means. The people of Cosmo Canyon disagree. Thus, when some of Fuhito's worse excesses came to light, the Canyon's Elders told them they were no longer welcome here, and for whatever reason, AVALANCHE chose not to dispute that." 

_Fuhito._ Yeah, I remembered that sick little bastard. Just as bad as Hojo, if not worse. Essai and Sebastian's murderer. I was starting to wonder whether, if I kept losing friends at the same rate as I had since the end of the Wutai War, I would even have any left in five years or so. 

"I always wondered—" I stopped in mid-sentence as I realized it would be a tactless question, even for me. 

"Hm?" 

Oh, well, too late now. "Why you're with Shinra. I mean, being Wutainese and all. You don't have to answer if you don't want to." I waved my hands a bit for emphasis. 

"It isn't any great secret, Major Fair. Perhaps you're aware that Wutai was originally several separate countries." 

"No, actually I wasn't. I, uh, kind of suck at history." I rubbed the back of my head. 

Tseng sighed. "Three hundred years ago, there were no less than four countries on the Wutai subcontinent. Each had its own ruler, its own language, its own customs. The name _Wutai_ belonged to the northernmost of those nations, and gradually it began to absorb all the others. The wars ended ninety-eight years ago, when Wutai defeated Xien, in the far southwest." 

Tseng stopped there for a few steps, to let that sink in. I gritted my teeth. If I tried to hurry him along, he'd just tell me not to be impatient or something. Like Seph always did. Had to wait him out. I did a couple of upper-body stretches, linking my hands above my head and leaning from side to side. 

"My great-grandfather held a high rank in the royal court of Xien—the equivalent of a duke in Eastern terms," Tseng continued at last. "He lost his rank after the conquest, but he never, ever forgot what he had been. He raised my grandfather as a noble of Xien, teaching him a language that had become illegal to speak and customs that could no longer be practiced in public. And I was raised by my grandparents after my parents died in an epidemic that swept through the south. Even the name 'Tseng' is in the ancient language of Xien. On the census rolls of the Wutainese conquerors, I have quite a different name." 

I'd always thought his name was kind of weird, but I'd never quite been able to bring myself to say anything. "So Wutai did to your people what Shinra did to Wutai, pretty much," I said, working through it slowly. "And the enemy of your enemy is your friend?" 

"That was more or less what I thought, when I was younger and more foolish," Tseng admitted. "Since then, I've become too deeply mired in Shinra's business to pull out again. There are people here that I care about—Rufus Shinra, Miss Gainsborough, even that scapegrace Reno." 

"You make it sound like you're a lot older than Reno." And me and Aerith. Personally, I bet Tseng was about the same age as Seph, who was either twenty-two or twenty-three—he knew what year he'd been born in, but not exactly when his birthday was. There was a date they used sometimes on Shinra publications—and on the Silver Elite fansite—but since it matched up perfectly with Shinra's Founder's Day, Seph had decided a long time ago that it was probably bogus. 

Come to think of it, Vince would probably know what day Seph was born. I'd have to remember to ask, if Seph hadn't already. Maybe next year, we'd finally be able to celebrate his birthday properly. 

"Twenty-six," Tseng said quietly. "I've been a Turk for ten years." 

And Reno had turned twenty this year—I'd helped throw the party. "Not _that_ much older, then." 

"Possibly not in absolute terms, but your young friend Strife is more mentally and emotionally mature than I'm starting to think Reno will ever be." 

I laughed. "That's just because Cloud's such an old man sometimes." We were almost at the helicopter—I could see it right there, at the top of the next hill. Then our path dipped down into a valley, and I _couldn't_ see it anymore, but that wasn't exactly a big deal until the other guys jumped out at us. 

There were four of them, all wearing black and charcoal grey. Black helmets with red visors. The combination was altogether too familiar. 

We'd just walked into a rookery of AVALANCHE Ravens. 

It was a good thing I hadn't had breakfast yet, because I felt like Cloud in the back of a truck. These . . . things . . . had been human once, but they weren't really anymore. Not in the ways that mattered. Their memories, their personalities . . . their _souls_ had pretty much been sucked out. It was kind of like the opposite of Seph, who might not be physically human, but definitely had a personality. And a soul. 

I pulled out the Buster Sword. I knew there was no point in having a conversation with these guys. It was like they didn't have any reason _not_ to follow orders, and there wasn't enough going on in their heads that you could give them one. Plus, stalling was the last thing I wanted to do at this point. If they were here, then we had to get back to town as quickly as possible. Which reminded me . . . 

"I thought you said AVALANCHE stays away from Cosmo Canyon," I said to Tseng, who had pulled his gun and aimed it steadily at one of the Ravens. 

"Normally, they do," the Turk said. He picked a Raven—the tallest, skinniest one—did his best to make eye contact, and said, "What are you doing here?" 

The Raven jumped forward, Tseng pulled the trigger . . . and the fight was on. 

This bunch . . . were weaker than Stephen and Essai had been, up by Icicle Inn, after Fuhito had messed with them. Maybe it was because these Ravens had never been SOLDIERs. No training, no discipline. They used their weapons like a bunch of kids waving sticks around. It was only the way they regenerated that made them dangerous at all, and there was always a way to overload that. Tseng did it by emptying an entire clip into one guy's brain, and I did it by cutting pieces off. Especially heads. Those didn't grow back. 

So, ten minutes later, we were standing over four dead bodies. We were both splattered with blood, and Tseng had a long slit in the left sleeve of his suit, with more blood along the edges. He'd already Cured the wound, though. It was just messy. And he was breathing hard. Being unenhanced had to suck at times like these. 

"Go on ahead," he said. "I'll catch up. One of us has to get back to her before anything happens." 

"Gotcha." And I took off for Cosmo Canyon at a run. 

_Aerith, please be okay._

There were a few more early risers out now, and they stared at me as I sprinted up the slope towards the inn. Good thing they all had the sense to get out of my way, because I wasn't stopping for _anyone_ right now. I did have to hurdle a wheelbarrow full of vegetables at one point, but I didn't even need to slow down for that. All those stupid obstacle courses I'd run as a new Third were good for something, I guess. 

I got to the inn just as the fight came spilling out the front door—Spiky trying to handle two Ravens, Tifa with one, and Aerith standing behind casting Cure and occasionally poking one of Cloud's enemies with the tip of her staff when she had a moment. They'd obviously sent the better ones here. Cloud was only just holding his own, with his sword divided into two separate blades, one for each hand. I hadn't even known you could do that, but I wasn't _too_ surprised. I mean, there was no way Seph would have given him an ordinary sword. 

I used my forward momentum by pulling my sword and charging straight at one of the Ravens. He turned out not to be as fast as a First Class. The Buster Sword went right through him. And kept on going, since I couldn't kill the momentum right away. He ended up pinned to one of the cliff walls like one of those butterflies in that stupid display we'd had on the wall of our high school classroom. One pull told me my sword wasn't going to come out quickly, so I left it and the still-wiggling Raven and went after Spiky's other opponent with my fists. I'd have a hard time killing him that way, but I figured I could slow him down, and Cloud could chop his head off or pith his brain or something. 

Aerith yelped as I grabbed the Raven in a bear hug. I wrestled for a moment before Cloud managed to slice the bastard's stomach open and spill his guts all over the place. Even if he managed to scoop the mess back inside, it would be a while before he healed from that. If he could at all. 

I took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off my forehead. That was when I finally registered what Aerith was yelling at me. 

"Zack! _Zack!_ Tifa—" 

I blinked and looked around. No Tifa. No third Raven, either. A moment later I did spot them. The Raven was free-climbing up the side of the cliff, with Tifa slung over his shoulder. She wasn't moving. I was pretty sure she wasn't dead, though. No blood. She'd probably gotten hit with a Sleepel or gotten a faceful of dream powder or something. 

Options, options, options . . . I ground my teeth. I couldn't see how we could attack the Raven without risking Tifa's life. A Slow or Stop spell might have helped, but I didn't have a Time materia with me, and I didn't think anyone else did either. 

Maybe if I beat him to the top . . . 

I didn't stop to think about it more. I grabbed the sword the Raven who was trying to scoop his guts back in had been using and ran for the nearest ladder. It led to an open-sided hut, and I cut away the heavy green woven stuff they used for ceilings so that I could jump from there to the ledge above the weapon shop entrance, then ran inside the cave and threw myself up the ladder to Bugenhagen's observatory. When I came out at the top, I hurried over to the silly little gate that led to the mailbox, then kicked part of the fence down when I realized that didn't quite put me where I needed to be. There. I was right above the Raven, who was fooling with something made of cloth and poles. Like a tent, except that it didn't look very tent-shaped. And it was covering the whole ledge he and Tifa were on. I wanted—I needed—to jump down, but I couldn't see Tifa and if I landed on her, it might kill her. 

Damn it all! Sephiroth would have been able to peel the Raven off the cliff while he'd still been on the way up, grab Tifa, and land safely on the ground, but I was just Zack Fair. Tifa was . . . Tifa was . . . and for a second, the not-a-tent moved just far enough for me to be able to see. There! 

I jumped. And the Raven jumped. 

The not-a-tent was a _hang glider_. A two-person one. My extended fingers just managed to brush against the tail as the Raven took off with Tifa. And I fell off the ledge and had to catch myself by stuffing the other Raven's sword into a crack in the cliff face. 

I couldn't do anything but dangle there as I watched them fly away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why Tseng decided to give Zack a history lesson here rather than just brushing him off, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.


	57. Chapter 57

**Sephiroth**

I drifted up out of dreams with that familiar mako-behemoth-gun oil-Vincent smell in my nostrils. It took a moment for me to understand that that was because I'd buried my face in his hair. I was spooned up against his back with my sword arm resting across his flank and our legs tangled together down below. And I couldn't remember ever being so comfortable and relaxed upon waking before. The knowledge that I was in a safe place with someone who would defend me to the death had seeped down into my subconscious, warming me. I wasn't used to feeling truly _safe_ , even in my own room in the Shinra Tower. There had always been a chance, albeit a very small one that had never been realized, of Hojo bursting in armed with a dose of behemoth tranquilizer. 

I pressed a kiss to the nape of Vincent's neck. That was a new feeling too, being able to touch him in ways I had never wanted to touch anyone before. It filled up some emptiness inside me that I had never even noticed existed. 

He twisted around and planted a light kiss on my lips. Smiling as he pulled away again. 

"I didn't realize you were awake," I murmured, for his ears alone. 

"Ironically, I don't need that much sleep. And I haven't been pushing myself the way you have." 

He was stroking my hair again. It seemed to hold some kind of fascination for him. Perhaps it was the texture. I'd touched enough normal human hair over the years to be aware of the differences. 

There was some little part of me that kept expecting him to run away screaming, even after everything he had said and done and _offered_. Instead, he rolled over so that we were facing each other, and pressed a kiss to my throat, right over the carotid artery. I found myself sinking my hand into his hair and readjusting the angle of his head with a hard pull so that I could press our lips together again. _That_ was what felt the most _right_ in all of this. Dominating him. And the way he let me do it, submitting without even a trace of resistance. The reason he found my touch sexually satisfying, despite everything, seemed to have to do with that dynamic. I couldn't even pretend to understand it, but then I was hardly an expert on human sexuality. 

"We have to get up," I grumbled. 

Vincent grunted and sat up, baring his scars as the blankets tumbled down. I found myself putting my hand over his heart, feeling the rippled, off-colour tissue against my palm as I had last night. Somehow the nipple on that side had escaped destruction, although the areola was clipped into a triangular shape. It engorged visibly, even though my touch hadn't been intended as anything sexual. 

"If you keep doing that, I may not be able to stand up straight," its owner said, and although his voice was flat, I could see the heat in his eyes. 

"My apologies." I lowered my hand and used it to flip back the blankets instead. We'd both put our trousers back on . . . afterwards. And arranged our weapons within reach. _Everywhere is enemy territory._ "I still don't understand very well . . ." 

"Neither do I," Vincent admitted. "I've never been as . . . profoundly obsessed . . . with anyone as I seem to be with you. I suppose it's because the ties between us run so deep." 

"My mother . . ." It wasn't just curiosity. If there was anyone else who had a hold on his emotions, it could only be Lucrecia Crescent. 

Decisively, Vincent shook his head. "I was a different person then, and it was all a piece of foolishness anyway. I think I just coveted something that I saw as warm and pure—something not stained by the blood I'd already wallowed in. I never really tried to understand her . . . and since you dragged me back into the world, it's been getting harder and harder to remember her face. I keep on seeing yours instead." 

I couldn't claim that I really understood, since I had never experienced that type of gentle infatuation. My current beautiful madness, centering around this man, was the only basis I had for comparison. But that the memory of her was fading from his mind pleased me greatly. 

"And the blood on my hands doesn't bother you?" _Why do I keep trying to test this bond of ours to destruction? Is this what I need to be certain it's truly solid?_

"I think you were right in what you said last night. This works because our worst experiences are _shared_. We both know. We don't have to talk about it in order to understand each other." Vincent smiled suddenly. "And besides, they're beautiful hands." He raised the nearest one to his lips and kissed it, as punctuation. 

I smoothed his hair back out of his face, only to have it fall back over my fingers a moment later. "We really have to get up," I said regretfully. Breakfast, briefings, transport . . . 

"We can talk more tonight," the ex-Turk said, and I felt something inside me relax at the words. This wasn't going to end just because we had to let the outside world back in for a little while. 

Vincent gathered his weapons and clothing to go back to his own room for a shower and a change, and I needed to do the same, or every SOLDIER in the building would smell him on me and know exactly what we had been doing. I didn't mind if the Seconds we'd brought with us figured it out, but not all the Thirds assigned here were completely trustworthy. If they had been, they wouldn't have been sent to Wutai in the first place. I knew it was inevitable that news would leak to both the press and that miserable agglomeration of stalkers who called themselves my fan club, but I was hoping it wouldn't be for a few weeks yet. By then, I would have thought of some way to deal with it other than having Midgar bombed from the air. 

When I joined the others for breakfast in the mess hall, neither Vincent nor I gave any sign of what had happened between us. Instead, we sat side-by-side, never touching, and listened in silence as Reno complained about the food and tried to discuss munitions between glares from Rude. Veld was looking at us oddly, though. Well, he'd known Vincent longer than most. Perhaps he was picking up something in the ex-Turk's expression, something even I couldn't see. 

The briefing came after the meal. How many hundreds of times had I done this? A few of them had even had Reno making more snide remarks. Enough that I was used to ignoring him. I didn't get far enough down the list of contingency plans to mention the giant adamantoise, which was probably just as well. 

After that, we loaded the Turks' extra gear—and the Turks themselves—onto a sextet of chocobos, and left, following the old road up into the mountains. Once we were out of sight of the city, the surface under our feet changed from asphalt to fitted blocks of stone. Surprisingly few of them were missing, although I knew this had been here, without maintenance, for hundreds of years. 

We stopped at a bend in the road not visible from the fort, and tethered the chocobos, laying out a pile of mixed greens to keep them quiet and busy. Reno and Rude filled backpacks with explosives and detonators and vanished into the scrubby dead bushes along the mountainside, which was quite a trick for someone with Reno's hair. Then we all picked up various parts of the heavy guns and their ammunition (and I wasn't exempt from that: even a mortar designed to be carried by unenhanced infantry is not a small object, and we had two of them, with shells, plus some other equipment) and approached the fort on foot at a normal human walking pace. It was roughly half a mile. 

The fort itself looked like many others I had seen (and invaded, and destroyed) during the war: traditional wooden architecture, possibly sprayed with fire retardant but nonetheless unsuited for a modern strongpoint. And all the more ridiculous in that they had built it of wood in an area where fireproof stone was by far the more abundant resource. 

We set up the guns on a nearby ridge with a good view. And then we waited another half an hour or so, until there was a noise like _crumph_ and twin plumes of dust began to rise from the valley behind the fort. 

" _We're good to go, boss! Um, Gen'ral, I mean, yo._ " Reno's voice in my earpiece was crackly—we were on the low-powered mesh networking system again—but clear enough to be understood. 

"Bring the wall down," I said on the general channel—there was no point in giving our opponents time to consider this or regroup. 

Vincent and Veld did the honours, firing the mortars at almost the same instant. The explosions and shaking ground a moment later indicated that neither of them had missed. 

It would take a little while for the dust to settle so that we could see whether we needed another round or not. By then, Reno and Rude should be well on their way back. But there were definitely people shouting down below, most of them using words considered improper in polite society. 

Veld calmly reloaded his mortar and dropped a shrapnel shell into the middle of the dust cloud. I raised my hand and tossed a Tornado spell into the mess. It might clear the air a bit, and would definitely make a mess of the defenders. 

One particularly unlucky man was spat high into the sky by my spell and dropped, with bone-crushing force, on the ridge not too far from us. I didn't think anything of it until he started to get up again, and one of the Seconds sliced his head off. _Ravens_. I'd never seen one before in person, but I'd read the reports. 

This was going to be . . . interesting. 

"We're going in," I said, and the Second Classes repositioned themselves slightly, forming an even rank. Vincent set himself at my right. And then we were all charging downhill. 

There were, it turned out, exactly twenty-nine Ravens, including the one who had unexpectedly landed on the ridge. They were annoying because they healed faster even than me, although the dull expressions on their faces when someone happened to knock one of those visors off made it clear what price they had paid for the ability. Decapitation turned out to be the easiest method of dealing with them, although a triplet of very large bullets blowing most of the brain out the backs of their heads was effective as well, if perhaps even uglier. 

When we had taken them all down, it seemed for a moment as though we were the only thing moving. Then there was a huge swirl of energy out of which a massive, brown, vaguely humanoid figure with large horns appeared: an Ifrit summon. With a smaller figure clad in red standing beside its hoof: Genesis Rhapsodos. 

The mortar fired again, and hit the Ifrit directly in the face. _Anti-magic round,_ I realized, seeing the slight disruption. Not that it was going to do much against the beast. 

The official line of Shinra's Science Department was that summoned creatures were only illusions, shaped manifestations of energy, but knowing about the connections between those materia and the Immortalis made me fairly certain that was not, in fact, the case. Would this Ifrit remember fighting us? Was it mentally present enough to feel pain? Or was the world outside the materia just a dream to it, a long nightmare it would wake from only when it was embodied again? 

I looked at Vincent and jerked my head in the direction of the Ifrit. He frowned, but also nodded. And swapped a materia on the fly. 

The Ifrit roared as the first triplet of ice-elemental bullets slammed into it. Meanwhile, there was a red blur headed for me. 

Genesis . . . appeared healthy, as Zack had told me. His hair was back to its natural colour, and his face was unlined, but there was something odd in his eyes as our blades clashed. 

He left an opening, low on his left. Not a feint, but a familiar gap in his defenses. Normally I used it to kick him in the knee, but this time . . . No. Not yet. Something wasn't quite right. Normally Genesis would have been talking at me right now, simply because he was Genesis. 

"If I said I was pleased to see you looking so well, would you believe me?" I asked as we both fell back half a step. 

" _There is no hate, only joy / For you are beloved by the goddess / Hero of Dawn, Healer of Worlds._ " Genesis' smile was so crooked that it barely counted _as_ a smile. 

"Don't quote _Loveless_ at me. Especially when it makes no sense in context. Or have you finally lost your mind?" I didn't even bother trying to be polite. Genesis could be infuriating, but he tended to get even worse when faced with a dishonest reaction. And while talking to him might be like wandering through a minefield, I didn't want to have to kill him. I didn't have such an abundance of friends that I was willing to give one of them up without a fight. Only now, confronting him face-to-face once again, did I truly realize that he still _was_ my friend, even though it was . . . extremely irrational for me to remain attached. 

"Mmm. Lost it, then found it again. You _might_ say. Although it looks to me more as though you've lost yours. Or don't you understand yet what it is that walks by your side?" 

Those who walked beside me . . . Vincent. Zack. Cloud? I didn't know what connections Genesis still had inside Shinra. He might know about Cloud. But his choice of words— _what_ and not _who_ . . . 

"Is this about _Chaos_?" I said incredulously. The only other possibilities I could think of were Nanaki the firelion and Aerith the Cetra, and neither of those people had come here with me. 

"You always did have a quick mind," Genesis said, his blade hissing towards my chest. When I blocked with Masamune, Rapier spat fire at my face, forcing me to shield my eyes with a gloved hand. "But apparently not quick enough in this case. _Soul wrought of terra corrupt . . ._ What do you need that for, Sephiroth? What do you intend to use the Harbinger of the End for?" 

_The first time Genesis ever quotes anything but_ Loveless _at me, and it would have to be that._ "I don't intend to use it for anything at all." 

"Then why is it incarnate?" 

"Can't you guess? A Shinra scientist bit off a bit more than she could chew. Isn't that always the way?" Never mind that the scientist had been my mother. Lucrecia Crescent had been in a relationship with _Hojo_ , which proved that her ability to evaluate risks hadn't been of the best. 

"And you left it _alive_? Do you even understand what that thing actually _is_?" 

"At the moment, it's under control," I said coldly. "And if its host loses control, I will destroy it, and him. That's all you need to know." 

Genesis sneered as he laughed. "You always did have a highly inflated opinion of yourself, didn't you? You're not strong enough to fight Chaos. Jenova wasn't that strong. _Minerva_ isn't that strong. And you're just a bizarre little experiment, neither human nor true Immortalis. You can't even cast a spell without relying on materia to help you shape the energies, and you expect to go up against _that_?" 

It could just have been babble . . . but I didn't think it was, somehow. "Whose materia did you let Hojo plant in you? Or was that your cure, Genesis? Did you beg for it?" I paused, then added in a deadly level tone, "Should I even be calling you Genesis? Is there anything of him left?" From the flickering expressions on his face, the hint of self-doubt, I must have touched a nerve. And all the time we were talking, we were also fighting, and Vincent was hurling bullets and ice spells at the Summon high above us. 

Then the summoned creature vanished with an indescribably loud noise that seemed to incorporate a final roar. It made Genesis wince, and although I refused to flinch, I did grit my teeth against the brief flash of pain digging into my sensitive ears. Vincent landed by my side, feet firmly planted, and raised his gun to point at Genesis. 

Spells flickered in front of Genesis like a stream of test results running up the screen of a computer too quickly to be read . . . Barrier and MBarrier and Shield. I prepared a DeSpell, but chose not to cast. Not yet. 

"I am Genesis Rhapsodos," the red-head said firmly. "And no one else. And I will ensure that this world does not end prematurely." 

"By killing an innocent man? How does this fit in with your delusions of heroism?" Keep digging, and perhaps I could get through to him by tying him up in the contradictions of his own actions. 

I was all out of other ideas. But I wasn't going to give up. Although if it came to it, I already knew whom I would choose to preserve, and whom I would destroy. 

" _My friend, the fates are cruel. / There are no dreams, no honour remains,_ " Genesis said, looking tired. " _So farewell hope, and, with hope, fairwell fear, / Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost._ " Which was nothing I had ever heard before, but just as clearly a quotation as the lines preceding it. And clearly a statement of intent, damn him. 

Green energy flashed. _Hell! Not this again._ The Ultima spell flowered right under my nose, and we were at too close a range this time—I couldn't block it— 

A flicker of movement. A dark figure pushing itself in front of me just as the spell went off. _Vincent!_ Too late to stop him, too slow, even with my preternatural reflexes. 

The edge of the spell, sliding around him, flung me to the ground. I snarled in rage and shame, swinging Masamune to cut the force even from that awkward position, while inwardly I called myself a coward and a fool. Letting myself be saved, like some useless damsel in distress. I suspected I knew now how Vincent had felt when Hojo shot him. 

I was not here in this world to be _protected_. 

The roar and the sudden flare of wings in front of me as Chaos manifested was not unexpected. Nor, unfortunately, was Genesis' slightly unhinged laughter. 

"I will not regret," said the last survivor of Banora as different energies exploded around us, and Genesis' body unfurled into . . . something quite _other_. 

It might almost have been human. It had the general appearance of a human, although it was twelve feet tall. Armour in an ancient Wutainese style covered its entire body, showing not a shred of skin. It wore a mask of iron under its helmet. There might have been eyes behind the openings provided for such. Or there might not. For once, no matter how enhanced my eyes might be, they couldn't pierce the darkness. 

In its right hand, it held an odd sword I remembered from the caverns under Banora. Although it had been in a different hand, then. 

" _Susano-o,_ " Chaos said, in a voice that wasn't quite Vincent's. "What do you seek here?" 

"Your return to dormancy." That voice wasn't Genesis' at all, although it had an odd, echoing quality that made it difficult to pinpoint exactly what it would sound like without the helmet. 

I positioned myself to Chaos' left as it smiled obscenely and said, "Why such a hurry? I rather like being out in the world. And my host has _finally_ gotten over feeling disgustingly guilty all the time. Do you know how long that took?" 

"I have no idea. Nor do I care. While you remain incarnate, the world is in danger." 

"Is that what this is about? You think destroying my host will save the world?" 

"You're out to slaughter Vincent as a _precautionary measure_?" I added. "That's more vile than anything we ever did for Shinra, I think. Even the Turks seldom get missions like that." 

Suddenly, without warning, Susano-o twitched his hand, and the odd sword-whip he wielded came flying towards me. I raised Masamune to block, and was surprised when the impact sent me sliding back, my heels creating furrows in the dirt. Even Angeal hadn't been strong enough to do that to me. 

Well. This was going to be . . . interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis' brief non-Final-Fantasy quote is from _Paradise Lost_. I'm not all that enthusiastic about Milton's subject matter, but fragments of his poetry have stuck with me through the years.


	58. Chapter 58

**Vincent**

Throwing myself between Sephiroth and the Ultima spell had been pure, uncalculated spinal reflex—if I'd stopped to think, I wouldn't have been able to move fast enough. The magic burned into me like cold fire, and then Chaos emerged in a single surge and stole my body from me, reducing me to a spectator. 

Sephiroth, being Sephiroth, recovered almost immediately and came to stand beside me . . . beside Chaos, with his right side exposed to the creature. I wanted to warn him away, but there was no way I could communicate right now. 

«Don't worry, host-mine. I have no intention of hurting that pretty mate of yours. It's much more amusing to see you make a fool of yourself over him.» 

I didn't need the reminder just then that the previous evening had been a warped kind of threesome. 

«Get used to it,» Chaos told me, as Sephiroth spoke aloud to the massive figure with the odd sword. 

" . . . Even the Turks seldom get missions like that," my partner finished, and Susano-o swung at him. My impulse was to step forward again, but Chaos just watched as Sephiroth blocked with Masamune. The giant was strong enough to push him back, but that just seemed to make Sephiroth a bit irritated. 

" _Sir—_ " someone said into the coms system—I was wearing an earpiece this time too, and not enjoying it. I wasn't sure how it had managed to stick around through my transformation. Perhaps because I didn't regard it as mine. 

"Retreat past the wall," Sephiroth said calmly, dodging our opponent's whipping blade. "Target with firearms and materia as opportunity permits." 

" _Understood._ " The earpiece went dead again, thankfully. 

Chaos was watching the deadly dance of blades going on in front of us, but not joining in. If I'd had control of my jaw, I would have ground my teeth. 

«Do you really think he would be pleased if we intervened? He values his strength, that one. In fact, it looks to me like he's putting himself on display for you, don't you agree?» 

I had to admit that there was a certain beauty to the way Sephiroth fought, fluid and graceful, with Masamune raining down precise and powerful blows on his enemy. He leaped over the serpent blade and cut at Susano-o's shoulder, breaking the armour and making him bleed, then, when the giant tried to slap him away, grabbing the oversized wrist and using it to sling himself around and change his trajectory. However, I was sure he wasn't doing it for my benefit. 

His boots had barely touched the ground when he jumped again, using the whipping serpent sword as a springboard for a second leap this time, and letting off a Flare straight into Susano-o's face. 

" _Bastard,_ " the giant hissed, and threw a barrage of fireballs back—that had to be pure Genesis Rhapsodos, not Susano-o. But then, he had seemed to be the one in control. Mostly. 

«I think very little of Susano-o's personality remains. They weren't very compatible, and Rhapsodos must have had the stronger will. It isn't like our situation, where both of us are too stubborn to give way.» 

_And here I thought it was just that I tasted bad._ For quite a while after I'd woken up with Chaos inside me, I had _wanted_ to die. Shouldn't that have been enough to let it destroy me? 

«You've got more steel in your core than you realize, host-mine.» 

_Do I?_ In that case . . . 

I flung myself at Chaos, inwardly. Grabbing for the reins of our shared body, which it was holding so lightly. 

And for a moment, I had wings. Not just someone else's borrowed ones, but wings of my own, that answered when I worked the half-familiar muscles and shot me up into the sky. 

I was about twenty feet up when my own body returned, with a sharp, twisting pain. I gritted my teeth, flipped myself in midair, and aimed Cerberus carefully. There were six bullets left that I hadn't used on the Ifrit, and I pulled the trigger once, pointing the gun just below the edge of Susano-o's helmet. 

As I'd hoped, the giant raised his arm and twisted around to attack me. I shifted my aim and pulled the trigger a second time. There had been several suits of armour of various origins on display in my father's home, and there was something they all had in common: a slit or a gap at the armpit, to make it easier for the wearer to move. And sure enough, one of the bullets went straight in. 

The giant howled—I wasn't sure whether it was rage or pain, and in any case, I was preoccupied with landing and reloading. I'd already used up my one quick-load in the fight with the Ifrit, and so had to insert bullets into Cerberus one at a time while trying to avoid being hit again. Twice, Sephiroth had to knock that bizarre sword away from me, and I more than half-expected the giant to use another casting of Ultima as a flyswatter. 

Except that it never did. Was it possible that it wasn't capable? Where had Genesis' sword and materia and other equipment gone when he changed forms? Did Susano-o even need materia? What Genesis had said to Sephiroth implied that he didn't, but . . . perhaps it was taking a certain amount of concentration for him to remain in his monstrous form? If you summoned something using a materia, it only ever displayed one or two abilities, and they weren't always spell-like. 

It would have been nice if Chaos had gotten chatty in a useful way again, but it seemed dazed, or maybe even semiconscious. Perhaps it was. I had never snatched my body back when I was already transformed before, and that might have had an effect. 

At last, I'd gotten all eighteen bullets in, and snapped the gun shut. Sephiroth caught my eye and made a small head motion, and we took off running in opposite directions. Trying to divide the giant's attention. I needed a higher vantage point, anyway—shooting upward from the ground wasn't going to cut it unless I got really lucky, and being in the air was always a risk. 

What remained of the perimeter wall was high enough to offer some advantage, if a little further from the fight proper than I would have preferred, and there was a convenient ladder not far away. I hurled myself up it as another mortar round finally came from the ridge. The flying shrapnel didn't do much damage to Susano-o, but the force of the initial impact staggered him, and gave Sephiroth an opening. The powerful, scything blow of Masamune laid open the back of the giant's hand and made it drop its sword. 

"I don't want to kill you, Genesis," my partner said suddenly. "And you don't want to kill me, either, or you wouldn't be going about this so ineffectually. You're . . . stalling for time." He had one foot on the hilt of the fallen Serpent Sword, and Masamune's blade was pointed like an arrow towards the giant's face. "Under the circumstances, I don't suppose there's anything I can do about it. What I don't understand is _why_. Why save _Hojo_ , of all people? Since I don't see him here, I assume he's managed to creep away like the cockroach he is. What is going on here? And don't spout any nonsense about Chaos this time." 

Suddenly, the giant wasn't there anymore. Only Genesis Rhapsodos, sitting awkwardly on the ground, his weapon nowhere near his hand. The whip-like sword was gone too, and Sephiroth's foot hit the ground abruptly, almost staggering him. 

"There is only Chaos," Rhapsodos said, sounding almost sullen. " _When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end . . ._ You still don't understand what that thing _is_." 

Sephiroth still had his sword pointed at his onetime friend. "I don't _care_ what it is. Angeal was right—your head is thicker than Palmer's gut was." 

Genesis was staring at Masamune as though hypnotized. Was I really seeing in those eyes what I thought I was? There was only one way to find out. 

"Why do you want Sephiroth to kill you?" I asked. "A few days ago, you seemed willing to do anything in order to live." 

The ex-SOLDIER's head whipped around sharply, blue eyes probing mine. "Wretched Turk." 

I waited. So did Sephiroth. Rhapsodos looked down. 

"It all came clear," he told the ground. "In the moment I was cured, it all came clear. Everything I've done. Helping Hollander. How many of my men did I let him kill? I don't even know. And . . . my parents. Banora. I was angry at them, but that didn't justify taking their lives. And worst of all, I discovered . . . that the Gift of the Goddess wasn't for me. _Pride is lost / Wings stripped away, the end is nigh._ I'm not certain anymore who the hero is, but I know it isn't me. I . . . am merely a monster after all." Then he looked up, straight at Sephiroth. "I wasn't strong enough to break that fate. So I suppose you _are_ the more successful product after all—in sanity as well as physical stability." Genesis laughed bitterly. 

Sephiroth shook his head. "I came closer to breaking than you will ever know." 

"Spare me your false humility." 

_It isn't false._ I could tell. 

I was starting to understand the dynamic between these two men. _Publicly declares himself to be Sephiroth's rival,_ Genesis' file had said. And yet, it was Sephiroth who had become the General of SOLDIER and the public face of Shinra Corporation, while Genesis was relegated to a subordinate position. The red-head's personality made it impossible for him to understand that Sephiroth hadn't sought any of it. Like so many ambitious men, he found it insulting that the person who had the position he wanted attached no value to it. 

Genesis had compensated for being told he was inferior by telling himself that Sephiroth was merely lucky, and arrogant with it. With every defeat, he had built the wall of hostility around himself higher and higher. And Sephiroth, rational and stoic to a fault, couldn't understand why the man who had once been his friend was acting that way. 

_So you left him alone in the middle of Shinra, didn't you, Genesis, and then tried to commit suicide by Masamune, all as revenge for a fictitious slight._ The last time I had been so angry, the wrath had been abruptly drained from me by a gunshot wound to the chest. Hadn't Sephiroth suffered enough pain already? 

"I am not going to kill you," my partner was saying. 

"No, of course not," Genesis spat. "You could never be so kind." 

Sephiroth's expression was wooden. He flicked the transmitter on his headset on briefly, never taking his eyes off the red-head. "Move forward and secure the building proper. If Rufus Shinra, Professor Hojo, or the AVALANCHE leader known as Elfe are found, exercise extreme caution." He flicked it off again. "You are quite correct. I am not kind." A pause. "Genesis. We have already lost Angeal. Isn't that enough?" 

The red-head's expression was one of pure rage now. "We lost Angeal because _you_ didn't save him." 

"You mean that fairy tale Hollander told you about my cells being able to save your life?" 

" _Fairy tale?_ " 

"I have access to most of Hojo's records now," Sephiroth said as a pack of Second Classes came trotting past us, headed for the fort. "He knew of no way you could be saved by mere biology. The new head of the Science Department agrees. In particular, exposing you to my cells would have killed you. Quickly, and rather messily." 

Genesis laughed as though it hurt him. " _My friend, the fates are cruel . . ._ And so Hollander has the last laugh after all. Kill me." 

"No." 

" _Kill me._ " 

It took three steps forward before I could punch him in the jaw with my free left hand. Then, before Rhapsodos could straighten up, I pressed Cerberus against his temple. The ex-SOLDIER stared at me, and swallowed slowly. 

"Do you really want to die for wounded pride?" I asked. "If so, I can pull the trigger. Right now." 

"Why not just claw open my throat?" Genesis snapped. 

I looked him coldly in the eye. "Because I'm not an animal. Or a monster." _Just don't ask me what I actually_ am _, because I don't have an answer for you._ I had better things to do with my time than try to come up with a label that fit my bizarre situation. 

"You're Chaos' host." 

"Not by choice." 

"And you believe you can control that thing." 

"I have so far. For more than twenty years now. And if I can't, Sephiroth's already sworn to do whatever he has to to put an end to it." 

Genesis looked at Sephiroth, who gave him a nod. Another bitter laugh fell from Rhapsodos' lips. 

"More proof that I am not the hero, I suppose. _Which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath and infinite despair? / Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; / And in the lowest deep, a lower deep / Still threatening to devour me opens wide, / To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven._ And so you put me once more in my place, and strike me down who dared challenge you, as distant and aloof as the light that falls from the stars." He seemed to have forgotten that I had a gun pressed to his temple. Once again, he had eyes only for Sephiroth. 

I didn't mind being ignored, but my partner clearly wanted this man to live, and just as clearly didn't know how to go about convincing him to do so. 

"Still going on and on about your wounded pride," I said. "I don't remember that poem well enough to quote it—" Since one of the things I had discovered at the expensive and exclusive boys' school my father had sent me to when I'd ended up under his guardianship was that I had no interest in poetry. "—but I do know that that whole section is about rationalizing the speaker's unwillingness to admit he's been an arrogant fool. Is that what you are, Genesis Rhapsodos?" 

The blue eyes flicked to me again. "What do you want me to say, Turk?" 

"His name is Vincent," Sephiroth corrected. 

"Ah. My apologies. I repeat: what do you want me to say?" 

Sephiroth abruptly lowered Masamune, planting her point-down in the ground. I took my cue from him, sliding Cerberus back into his holster, but keeping my hand in a position that would allow me to arm myself again quickly if the need arose. 

"That you'll live," the General said. "That you'll come back with us." 

"And wait until after the court-martial to be shot? All the formalities in place?" 

"Do you honestly think I could do that to you?" Sephiroth ran a gloved hand through his forelock. For him, it was as good as screaming his distress. "We'll sweep it under the rug. Blame everything that's happened on Hollander and the copies he's been creating. If I have to force the rest of the Board to sign the appropriate papers at sword's point, then I will. In any case, everything is going to fall apart soon if I don't get at least one more competent First. And there aren't a lot of those available." 

The smile that lit Genesis' face now was a different kind of vicious from the one he had displayed before. "Beg me. Get down on your knees and bow your head and beg me to come back, oh General of Shinra." 

Sephiroth gave him a long look. Then, slowly, he got down on his knees amid the dirt and the rubble from the walls. He laid his hands palm-flat on the ground, and then bent until his forehead touched the backs of them. Strands of silver hair dragged in the dirt. 

"Genesis Rhapsodos, I beg of you. Return to Shinra with me." 

The ex-SOLDIER's lips were slightly parted as he stared at his friend. Sephiroth remained in his pose, unmoving. 

"It honestly doesn't matter to you, does it?" Genesis said. "Your pride. You're willing to just abandon it. For me." 

Slowly, the General sat back on his heels, the skirts of his leather coat pooling around his legs. "There are a few things that I consider more important than maintaining my public facade. Such as the lives of my very few friends." 

I offered him my hand, and he grasped it, letting me help him to his feet. He slapped dust from his coat, then turned and offered his hand to Genesis. Who looked from it to Sephiroth's face, then sighed and gripped and let himself be pulled up too. 

"So now what?" Genesis said. "There's no one left inside the fort, by the way. Except a couple of Ravens. Everyone else pulled out a while ago." 

"Going where?" I asked. 

"North." 

Sephiroth frowned. "Icicle Inn? What could they possibly want there? Or . . . no, there's nothing left in Modeoheim. Unless you and Hollander left something that Tseng was unable to find, which I doubt." 

"Further north than that," Genesis corrected. "Hojo has some kind of plan that he thinks is best carried out at a certain very large hole in the ground." 

The Northern Crater? "What kind of plan?" I asked sharply. 

"He claims it's to deal with you . . . well, with your evil twin. However, I must admit that on thinking it back over, I'm starting to feel rather dubious. For a number of reasons, not least of which is that whatever Hojo shot himself up with before leaving Midgar is making him behave somewhat oddly." 

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. The coms system crackled on again. " _Captain Yannis, sir. The fort's deserted, except for Ravens and, ah, parts of dead bodies. In jars in the basement. Someone was definitely running a lab out of here._ " 

"Those would be the remains of Fuhito's failures from the early phases of the Raven project," Genesis murmured—enhanced hearing must have allowed him to pick up what was being said. "He's just as disgusting as Hojo." 

"Do a quick check for hidden rooms, then withdraw," Sephiroth ordered, then flicked the headset off again. "Hojo's obsession has always been me. And Jenova, although I'm not certain the two are really separable in his mind. However, the Great North Crater is one of the few places in the world that I have never even visited." 

"It was where they found Jenova," I pointed out. 

"And where Jenova and Chaos fought to the death," Genesis added. 

_Wait, what?_

"Why so surprised? Don't tell me you didn't know." The red-head smirked at me. 

"Chaos only tells me what it wants me to know. Which, most of the time, isn't very much." 

Genesis blinked. "That isn't . . . You're still two separate entities? Completely?" 

"Meaning that it's otherwise for Rufus—and for you, I assume." Sephiroth was still frowning. 

"Mmm. Well, my situation isn't quite the same as his, either. Hojo and . . . the original Susano-o, I suppose I should call him, forced Shenlong's materia on Rufus by implanting it surgically. Since then, there have been times when he's . . . seemed not quite right, I suppose. He clearly has both sets of memories, and the personality is almost Rufus, but not quite. Sometimes he freezes up for a couple of seconds, or acts like he's getting a headache. The real Rufus would never have acted that human in public." 

"And you?" Green eyes were searching Genesis' face now. Searching for Susano-o, perhaps. 

"I equipped Susano-o's materia voluntarily into my body—I wonder if Immortalis infestations are one of the reasons we were always told that was a bad idea . . . ? His personality tried to push me down, so I shredded it." Genesis made it sound easy, but the sudden tension in his body suggested that it really hadn't been. "I have his abilities and some of his memories, but the rest is gone. Susano-o effectively no longer exists. And since we're doing confessions, what about you, Vincent? There shouldn't have been a Chaos materia to stuff into you, from what I understand." 

I shrugged and decided there was no reason not to tell him. "It was sealed in an isolated mako pool. I was injected with the mako as well as having an incomplete materia surgically implanted. At the time, I was in no condition to protest. But apparently Chaos and I are both too tough-minded for us to assimilate into a single being." The very thought was disturbing. "I'm not aware of its thoughts unless it chooses to tell me about them, and I definitely don't have its memories. I'm not sure to what extent it's aware of mine. It's able to control our body without my consent, but usually it only comes out if I'm injured. It seems to find it more amusing to watch as I make a fool of myself." 

"Hmm," was all Genesis said. 

Sephiroth was frowning. "And the Ancients used Chaos to kill Jenova." 

"Oh, yes. Susano-o wasn't present for the actual confrontation, but I can remember the circumstances quite clearly. The Cetra weren't nearly so warm-hearted and pacifistic as legend has painted them, you see. They were divided about letting those who couldn't hear the Lifestream—humans, in other words—exploit the Planet's resources. It eventually escalated into armed conflict, with Jenova and her friends on the pro-human side. They were outnumbered, and so resorted to biological warfare, creating a tricky little virus whose lifecycle is linked to the Cetra. Only Cetra can contract the airborne form, and only they can spread that form in the first place. The Cetra-descended bodies occupied by the Immortalis were not immune. Once that became apparent, a group of them gathered together to force Chaos into a materia and incarnate it to use as a last resort—WEAPON wasn't coming along quickly enough for their taste, I suppose. And that's why we have a Great North Crater. After making a dent in the Planet, Chaos' Cetra host tore the materia out of himself, threw it back into the Lifestream to dissolve, and committed suicide without realizing he hadn't completely destroyed Jenova." 

"Then Jenova didn't fall from the sky," Sephiroth said. 

"Actually, she did, but that's a minor detail that one of the surviving Cetra thought was poetic. Remind me to tell you about the Cetra spaceships sometime. Susano-o knew quite a bit about them." 

"Which brings us back around to the question of what Hojo and his friends are doing in the north," I said as the Second Classes began to emerge from the fort again. 

"Nothing good," Sephiroth said grimly. "We'll discuss it on the way back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, Genesis proves once again that he is a self-centered prat . . . but not incapable of guilt or shame. (And yes, that was _Paradise Lost_ again.)


	59. Chapter 59

**Cloud**

It was a dismal little group of people that gathered in the main room of Cosmo Canyon's Starlet Pub for an early lunch. The expression on Zack's face was especially disturbing. I mean, for as long as I'd known him, Zack had been positive and optimistic. Right now, though, he just looked like he was feeling guilty. He kept staring at the empty chair beside me. As though he was trying to make someone appear there by sheer force of will. 

Aerith just looked solemn. Nanaki . . . well, I had no idea how to read his expression. Tseng was hard to figure out too, but I could tell he looked tired. 

As for me, well, I was kind of wishing for one of those SOLDIER Specials from The Dangle back in Midgar. Except I wasn't sure I could have kept it down. I'd been busy enough for the past few hours, trying to track the Raven who had gotten away with Tifa, that I hadn't had to think, but now that I'd had to sit down, everything was hitting me at once. 

_Mother of Winter, I killed a man._ Never mind that Zack had tried to tell me that the Ravens weren't really people anymore. He'd still looked like a man. And screamed like one. And I'd gutted him and watched his insides spill out all over the ground and his spirit flow away in green sparkles and it had all been for nothing, anyway, because the other guy had still stolen Tifa. Every other thought I tried to wedge into my head ended up spiraling back to those two things: dead guy with his guts on the ground and his blood on Echo, and Tifa not being there. 

" _Strife_ ," Tseng said sharply. 

"It was his first kill, Tseng," Zack said. "Let it go. Spiky, if you need to talk . . ." 

I shook my head. "I'm fine. It's just . . . does it ever get easier?" 

Tseng and Zack exchanged glances. 

"Easi _er_ , yes," the Turk said. "But never entirely easy. If killing ever does become easy for you, you would be better off finding a different profession. Only the broken and the mad consider the taking of life unimportant." 

"At the same time, it's part of our job," Zack added. "We can't afford to get too hung up on it. It helps that we SOLDIERS are usually in a position where the other guy is trying to kill us, and signed up for the fight knowing what the risks were. Fighting to the death by mutual agreement, or killing to protect yourself or someone else—all those things are acceptable to an honourable man. Or at least, that's what Angeal told me when he found me puking my guts out over the first ninja I ever killed." 

Put that way, it didn't sound quite as bad. I hadn't picked the fight with the Ravens—they'd come to us. I'd just been trying to protect myself and my friends. But there was still the deep-down knowledge that I had done something that I could never fix or take back. 

_All SOLDIERs have to live with this,_ I told myself. _Sephiroth. Zack. Dane. Kunsel. Even Jackson and Arnulf. I knew what I was signing up for. It isn't like Zack never told me about his missions. A good three-quarters of it was monster hunting, but there was always some stuff that wasn't._

And it could have been worse. At least I wasn't a Turk. 

"Let us return to the main point," Tseng said. "The hang glider landed in a forested location atop one of the bluffs to the south-east of Cosmo Canyon. It is not reachable except by means of aircraft, and our helicopter has been sabotaged. I have already called to ask for more transport and a replacement part, but they will have to come from Rocket Town, which means we won't be seeing anything until midafternoon. By that time, I suspect AVALANCHE will already have picked up their Raven and his prisoner." 

"I tried to report in too," Zack added, with a grimace, "but it's earlier in Wutai than it is here, and Seph is out of contact, doing some kind of raid on an AVALANCHE stronghold. And really, I'm not sure he'd be able to help, anyway." 

"Our best chance of rescuing Tifa does lie with the General," Nanaki said. "If he destroys this AVALANCHE stronghold, perhaps they will be unable to send anyone after the Raven." 

"Unfortunately, their planning is usually better than that," Tseng said. "I would guess that whatever aircraft they meant to use is on standby somewhere to the south, if it hasn't already dropped in and taken on cargo. We will check, of course, on the chance that something has gone wrong, but . . ." 

It was quiet for a few seconds. I licked my lips. 

"Why Tifa?" I forced out. 

"Huh?" That was Zack, never at a loss for words. 

"It does seem odd—she wouldn't be of much more value to AVALANCHE than any other uncooperative-but-healthy young woman." Tseng frowned. 

"Maybe they were trying to grab all of us . . . ?" Zack suggested, but then he shook his head. "They would have sent more Ravens. Seven wouldn't have been enough to go up against a First, a Third, _and_ a Turk even if they'd all known how to fight, and the ones who jumped us out by the chopper were pretty weak." 

"Maybe it was a mistake." It was the first thing Aerith had said since we'd sat down, and we all looked at her. "What if they were trying to kidnap _me_ , and they didn't know there was another woman with us?" 

"Huh," Zack said. "Tifa _was_ right in their faces, and she does have, uh, a more obvious figure." 

"Bigger breasts, you mean," Aerith said. "Don't worry, you're not hurting my feelings by saying so, Zack. Silly. I've told you before: I don't mind if you look, as long as that's _all_ you do." 

Zack blushed. "Yeah, but the _way_ you say that always makes me . . . a little less sure." 

"Them wanting a Cetra for something is a bit more plausible, though. Especially if Hojo has joined forces with AVALANCHE." Nanaki shook his head, rattling the beads in his mane. "Perhaps we should eat. We can't do anything else until the helicopter is repaired." 

"When it is, I believe Miss Gainsborough and Major Fair should accompany the pilot of the relief helicopter back to Midgar," Tseng said. "Soldier Strife and I can remain here to search for Miss Lockheart. For a time, at least." 

"Oh, _hell_ , no," Zack said, before I could force anything out. 

"Exactly," Aerith added. "We're not abandoning our friend. I do know it would be safer if we did things your way, Tseng, but what's the point of being safe if you lose everyone who's important to you?" 

"It's possible to find purpose again, even after something like that," the Turk said quietly. "But I do admit that it sometimes takes a while." 

"Okay, okay," Zack said. "Enough with the long faces. Let's eat, and then poke around Cosmo Canyon—we haven't really had the chance to do the tourist thing yet, and I was kinda looking forward to it. Maybe it'll take our minds off things a bit." 

_Except that I was hoping to do it with Tifa,_ I didn't say. Looking at the view or shopping for souvenirs or whatever had a lot less appeal without her along. _I'll buy her something,_ I told myself. _And give it to her when we find her._ Since the Raven had insisted on taking her alive, he would probably be keeping her that way. There was a chance. There had to be a chance. I refused to believe she was dead. Not Tifa. 

_Please let her be okay._

I'm really glad it didn't occur to me until afterwards that they might try to turn her into a Raven. That would have made it impossible for me to eat lunch, and the food at the Starlet was pretty good. I didn't realize how hungry I was until I put the first mysterious stuffed mushroom in my mouth, but after that, the fuel needs of my mako-enhanced metabolism took over. Zack inhaled his food the same way as always, too. _Skipping meals doesn't help with any situation, unless your problem is a shortage of food,_ he'd told me once. Aerith was clearly forcing herself, but she did eat. And Tseng hadn't really been close to Tifa to begin with. 

Nanaki was the one who seemed to have no appetite at all. Now and again, he'd force his tongue out to lick at something that was on his plate, but I don't think he drew in and chewed more than a couple of mouthfuls. I didn't try to draw attention to him. I figured it was something he had to deal with himself. 

He seemed happy enough to play tour guide afterwards, though, leading us up and down the winding streets of the town. Some of which were tunnels or ledges or staircases, but the locals _called_ them all streets. A couple of times, I saw Tseng pull out his PHS and take notes. I was kind of curious, but there was no way I was going to be able to get a look over the shoulder of an uncooperative Turk. Who was taller than me, like just about every other man in the world. Ugh. 

Cosmo Canyon's nearest equivalent of a souvenir shop was a short row of open stalls capped with awnings, located halfway up a cliffside. Each of them was run, or at least stocked, by an individual artisan working in natural materials: earthenware pottery, carved wood, monster leather and ivory, glassware made from local sand, and lots of different preserved foods. 

It was one stall at the very end that caught my eye. It sold jewelry, made from silver and local agate or turquoise. There had to be something Tifa would like there, right? 

I picked over everything slowly, knowing that I couldn't give her a ring (just the thought was scary—I wasn't ready for that yet!), or anything that might dangle and get in the way as she fought. Bracelets were probably okay, I figured, or hair ornaments. Belt buckle . . . maybe not. 

"Hey, whatcha up to, Spiky?" 

"I'm trying to pick out something for Tifa," I said, as Zack and Aerith came to stand beside me. 

"Spiky . . ." 

"How about this?" Aerith said, reaching over and selecting a bracelet from the display, intricate silverwork with a piece of turquoise held between two dolphins. "It's the cuff kind, so Tifa should be able to fit it tight around her wrist under her fighting gloves, if she wants to wear it all the time." 

I smiled at her. "It's perfect, thanks." 

It was also five hundred gil, but I considered it money well-spent, and anyway, I was getting a decent salary now—nearly four thousand gil a month. Being a SOLDIER, even a Third Class, was different from being a trooper that way. 

I had the man running the stall wrap the bracelet for me, and stowed it in my pocket, ignoring the looks that said I might never have a chance to give it to Tifa. One way or another, I would. 

I caught the faint sound of a helicopter in the air, and looked up, staring into the sky until I managed to figure out which black dot it was. A black dot that flashed the Shinra logo at us as it got closer and expanded to housefly size. _I guess that really is our ride._

My legs ached with the desire to run toward the descending helicopter, but I gritted my teeth and told myself that _maybe_ getting to Tifa a few seconds sooner wasn't worth accidentally charging over a ledge. I made myself wait until Nanaki led off. 

The pilot of the new helicopter, which had landed beside the old one, turned out to be a red-headed female Turk who moved a bit stiffly as she swung down from the pilot's seat. 

"Cissnei!" Zack greeted her. "I thought you were still in the hospital." 

The Turk shook her head. "They cleared me for light duty yesterday. Piloting and paperwork, nothing too strenuous until they're sure my ribs are completely healed." 

"Piloting seems plenty strenuous to me," Zack said. 

"That's because you aren't a Turk. Tseng, I have two cases of spare parts in the back, but someone else is going to have to fetch them—I'm not allowed to lift more than ten pounds." 

"I'll do it," I said. It was better than just standing around. 

I climbed into the helicopter, and Cissnei pointed at the crates lashed down behind the seats. "It's the two big green ones. You're Cloud Strife, right?" 

The green ones, right. Bulky and three feet to a side. I could see why she didn't want to lift them. The third crate was white and slightly smaller and had markings for medical supplies. I hoped that meant someone was taking the whole Tifa-missing-and-might-be-hurt thing seriously. 

"Yeah, I'm Cloud. Has Zack been talking about me or something?" 

"Zack, Reno . . . even Rude and Tseng, a bit." 

"Rude talks?" I undid the ties holding the first crate down and hefted it. Not light, but I could manage. 

Cissnei laughed. "Yes, when he feels he needs to. Which isn't that often, since he works with Reno. But you've been on everyone's radar since you went to Nibelheim with Sephiroth." 

I carried the crate over to the open door and passed it down to Zack, who took it one-handed. Show-off. 

"I'm not allowed to talk about that," I said as I went back for the second crate. "And I've met enough Turks now to be able to figure out when one of you is trying to pump me for information." _Because that's what they always do,_ Vincent had warned me one night as he cleaned his gun. 

"Ah. All right then. I'll leave you in peace . . . for now." 

"Thanks." I handed the second crate down. Zack took it, passed it to Tseng, then hopped into the chopper uninvited, pulling Aerith up behind him. 

"Listen, Cissnei, I don't know what they told you about what's been happening here, but we kind of need a lift to the top of the bluffs in the southeast." 

"Yeah, I heard—you've got a missing sister-in-arms. Well, strap in." 

Nanaki jumped up and made himself at home in the cargo area while the rest of us sat down. Tseng hesitated, glancing at the crates of parts, then, with a grimace, heaved them into the disabled chopper and closed the door before getting into Cissnei's bird with us and taking the seat beside her, which none of us had dared to touch. I winced as the rotors started up—Cissnei hadn't bothered to stock extra ear protection for people with enhanced hearing. Zack had his hands over his ears, and I figured that was probably the best thing to do right now. 

It would have taken us all day to climb up the side of the bluff the hard way. With the helicopter, we were hovering over it in fifteen minutes. 

"That's the hang glider, isn't it?" Zack pointed. 

"I'll take us in closer," Cissnei said. 

It was the hang glider, all right. It trembled in the backwash from the rotors as we hovered over it, but no one came out from underneath, and there was no sign of Tifa or the Raven. 

"Most likely they were picked up, as we assumed," Tseng said. "Although it's remotely possible they may have wandered away into the forest. We'll have to set down and—" 

Something roared. Cissnei's hands twitched on the controls, and we were all thrown violently against our seatbelts. I gagged and swallowed several times as my lunch tried to push itself up and become acquainted with my lap, or maybe my boots. 

"Sorry," Zack said. "I guess I should change that ringtone again. Just a sec." He pulled out his PHS. "Seph, I'm kinda busy right now—AVALANCHE kidnapped Tifa and we're trying to find her—" 

" _The situation has changed._ " The General's voice wasn't as smooth over the phone as it was in real life—something about harmonics, I guess. " _I need you to return to Midgar immediately. Genesis has confirmed that Miss Gainsborough is a kidnapping target. AVALANCHE wants to use her as leverage against you._ " 

"We think they kidnapped Tifa because they mistook her for Aerith," Zack said. "And—wait a minute, _Genesis_ said? You actually got him to _talk_ to you?" 

" _Vincent and I were able to beat him into submission._ " There was a pause, then, " _It would be more efficient to simply abandon Miss Lockheart, but I know you won't be willing to do that. Wrap up your search as quickly as possible._ " 

"We will," Zack said, and cut the connection. "Okay, Cissnei, let's set down and have a look around—looks like the meter's running." 

"Right," the Turk said, and the helicopter began to drop again. 

"Would he really have expected us to abandon Tifa?" I muttered to Zack, leaning forward so I could talk to him across the back of the seat. 

"If our lives were in danger, maybe. Not otherwise. He isn't that much of an asshole . . . and he's smart enough to know I wouldn't obey an order like that anyway. But if we don't find anything down there, we _are_ going to have to go back to Midgar, Spiky." 

"I know." And I was pretty sure we weren't going to find anything. 

All I could do was pray for Tifa's safety, and that we'd find her in time.


	60. Chapter 60

**Rufus**

The far north was cold. Absolutely, completely, _horrifically_ cold. I almost fell from the sky before we reached the crater, and once we did land, I spent most of my time wishing for a nice warm mansion. Or cabin. Or dog house. Even once I resumed my human form to put a barrier of clothing between me and the wind, I felt like I was turning into a block of ice. A mere suit wasn't suited to this weather. 

Entering the caves got us out of the wind, but it was still bone-rippingly cold until we got several hundred feet down and the heat from the Planet's core began to mingle with the chill from above. 

Hojo was even more lightly dressed than I was, but he didn't seem to notice the temperature at all. He was less human now than the green-eyed, silver-haired menace that he considered his perfect specimen. By contrast, the Avalanche trio—Elfe, Fuhito, and Shears—were only now unbuttoning their heavy, fur-lined jackets. And they didn't take them off even when we'd reached a level where I felt quite comfortable. Between being Shenlong and the mako Hojo had dumped into me, I was less sensitive to temperature now. Without those factors, I probably would have died before we could get inside. 

_I'm not . . . what I was._ And if I kept going along with this, I was going to become even less what I had been. There might not even be any of Rufus Shinra left. But if it stopped Chaos from destroying the world, it was worth it. Not because I was an altruist who wanted to save people, but because there's no point in ruling over a pile of cinders and rubble. 

The smell of raw mako was so thick here that it felt like it was burning the linings of my nose. Suddenly, we passed a shoulder of rock and emerged into a cave of which one side was literally a _waterfall_ of mako, falling in a huge sheet down into the darkness somewhere below. This was the Lifestream, then. The home of all discarnate souls. And a very impressive sight. 

« _no, no, no_ » 

« _Jenova's successor—how?_ » 

« _Soul wrought of terra corrupt_ » 

« _not a danger, and we should leave them alone_ » 

I winced and put my hand to my forehead. Normally I would have had to reach for the Lifestream to be able to hear it, but we were so physically close to it here that I couldn't help it. And I didn't want to listen. The tumult was tremendous, voices tumbling over each other and shouting in multiple languages, not all of which I could understand. It had never been like this before. I should have been able to tune the voices out, but none of the exercises I'd learned as Shenlong was working. 

« _Behold mighty Chaos_ » 

« _none so blind as those who_ will not _see_ » 

« _half Jenova, half human, all monster_ » 

« _no, no, no, no, no!_ » 

Covering my ears didn't help, and I staggered up against a stone wall. 

"Hey, are you okay?" 

I almost laughed. If _Shears_ was the most compassionate of our little company, then perhaps we had no business trying to save the world. Perhaps we should just let it implode. _Since when do I care about compassion?_

"I need to get away from the mako." Which was more truth than I actually owed him, but once I was away from that green waterfall, I could make up whatever story I wanted. 

"Can you walk?" 

"I'm not that far gone," I said sharply. 

"This way, then." He grabbed me by the shoulder and steered me as I stumbled along, the din in my head so loud I couldn't force my eyes to focus. I think we passed some equipment at one point—a console with lots of blinking lights, some shadowy instruments that might have been monitoring the mako flow or the air or Hojo's jellybean stash for all I could tell. I wasn't really _aware_ again until we'd passed through a couple of doors and Shears was pushing me down into a sitting position on the edge of a cot. Elfe was looking at me with concern, Fuhito was frowning, and Hojo was . . . wriggling. Ugh. I could barely believe it, but I was missing Genesis. The half-crazy Loveless-quoting ex-SOLDIER had been the easiest one in this bunch to get along with. I mean, I wouldn't have said I _liked_ him, but at least he'd made it possible to have a few minutes of conversation with someone about random neutral topics. 

"Back with us?" Fuhito asked snidely. "It's _disgusting_ that the success of this project rests on the shoulders of a weak-minded— What _now_?!" He snarled the last words in the face of a man who had poked his head around the edge of a doorframe and into the room. 

"Beggin' your pardon, Doctor, but that Raven you asked us to pick up just got here, with a girl in tow." 

"Show me," Fuhito ordered, and left through the door the other man had been leaning through. A bit later, Hojo wandered off somewhere, and Shears escorted Elfe through another door off to the side, _finally_ leaving me alone. 

I flopped back on the cot with a sigh, not caring that it probably belonged to someone else. Great Gaia, I was tired. Tired of caves, tired of these people, and just plain exhausted. Flying all the way here from Wutai, mostly during the night, in the freezing cold, and then the Lifestream. It would have been nice just to let myself fall asleep, but I needed to find somewhere a bit more private first. 

Somewhere on the other side of one of those doors, someone was arguing. And there were footsteps that seemed to be headed in my direction. I muttered a choice phrase I'd picked up from Reno, and forced myself to sit up again. 

Someone pushed a _girl_ through the door Fuhito had disappeared through, and then slammed it shut again. 

"Stay there until we decide what to do with you," the little scientist said from the other side. By now, I'd be able to recognize his voice anywhere. 

The girl glared at the door. She didn't seem to have noticed me, and I took the opportunity to observe her. Age . . . sixteen, perhaps? Short, but with generous curves. Dark hair. Pretty enough, judging from the glimpse of her face I'd caught in profile, but not a world-class beauty by any stretch of the imagination—as the heir to Shinra, I'd seen a fair number of those in my life, and a lot of them had been throwing themselves at me. Back to this girl, though. Her clothing was completely inappropriate for the weather, except maybe for the boots. Combat boots, probably military surplus. And those were fighting gloves she wore on her hands. Not new ones, either. They'd been splattered with blood at least once, and then not cleaned off quickly enough. 

She stuck her tongue out at the door, and then turned and noticed me and blushed a little, probably because I'd caught her acting childish. I smirked, and she blushed even more. 

"That suit . . . Are you a Turk?" 

"If I said yes, would you believe me?" I asked, and waited for her to give something else away. If she'd recognized my clothes, she'd known at least one real Turk somewhere along the way, but if she'd been an important target, Tseng would have passed me her file at some point. 

She planted her hands on her hips and gave me a once-over. "Maybe. You somehow remind me of a cross between Reno and Tseng." 

I couldn't help it. I winced. "You're comparing me to _Reno_?" 

"Would you prefer it if I compared you to Rude?" 

"Maybe. At least Rude doesn't talk like an under-Plate reject. And I could use a pair of sunglasses right now." I answered the question as though it had been a test, although I was pretty sure she wasn't that sophisticated. 

"So what's a Turk doing here? Wherever here is?" 

"An AVALANCHE base located under the Northern Crater," I supplied. "And it's a long and highly classified story. I'm more curious about what _you're_ doing here." 

She sat down across from me, on another cot—there were four of them in the room. "I'm Tifa Lockheart." 

"Call me Shotgun." Most junior Turks used a codename based on their preferred weapon, so it was as good a label as any. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what the outside world thought of Rufus Shinra at the moment. 

"Okay, then. Shotgun. As for what I'm doing here, I have no idea. One minute I'm in Cosmo Canyon on a vacation with my boyfriend and a couple of other friends of ours, and a bunch of those Raven guys are picking a fight with us. Then, just as I'm about to punch one of them in the gut for the third time, everything goes black, and the next thing I know I'm here and some skinny guy with glasses is screaming about me being 'the wrong one'." Tifa shrugged. 

_Hmm._ "You were fighting a group of Ravens and winning? I know they're not as heavily enhanced as some SOLDIERs, but that seems unlikely." 

"My boyfriend is a SOLDIER. So is one of our friends. And Rude's been training me." 

"Why would Rude be training a civilian?" 

The girl shrugged again. "I don't think I should talk about that. Ask Tseng, or Veld. Or General Sephiroth, I guess." 

So whatever this was, the green-eyed menace was in on it, and the Turks were on his side? I'd known they were warming up to each other, the last few days before Hojo had snatched me, but . . . No. Tseng wouldn't betray me that way. 

"Shotgun? Are you okay?" 

"Just thinking," I said smoothly. "I've been out of contact for nearly a month, and when I left, the General wasn't getting along with us at all." 

"Oh. Well. Um. I'm afraid telling the parts of _that_ story I know would leave it fuller of holes than a lace doily, and probably get me in trouble with a whole bunch of people." 

I rolled my eyes. "Is there anything you would feel safe talking about?" 

"The weather, maybe? My hometown? The price of tea in Wutai? Which I know nothing about, by the way. It's just something my mom always used to say." 

Well, at least talking to her might be better than lying here staring at the walls. And I might be able to winkle out a few more worthwhile bits if I worked at it.


	61. Chapter 61

**Sephiroth**

I borrowed a set of handcuffs from Veld, and had Vincent march Genesis off our aircraft with his hands bound in front of him, while I carried Rapier slung alongside Masamune. It had taken hours to get Genesis to consent to that, even though no civilian witnesses would be allowed. The formality was necessary, though. Even if I intended to have him cleared of all charges, it hadn't been done yet. And what he had been charged with was, in effect, a species of treason. Along with desertion—which, since it had taken place in wartime, carried a death penalty of its own—murder, terrorism, destruction of Shinra property, conspiring with AVALANCHE, and a dozen more minor charges. 

Strong-arming the old Board into forgiving him would have been impossible, but the new Board wasn't likely to care nearly as much. Scarlet might, but she was outnumbered, thankfully, and everyone else could be persuaded. 

Rather than drive into town from the airfield, Genesis and Vincent and the Turks and I transferred to a helicopter for a direct transit to the Shinra Building's helipad. Again, it was the most private way of doing things. And from there, we went straight to my office. I'd arranged to convene an emergency meeting of the Board while we were enroute, but it wouldn't be for another two hours. 

"Wait outside," I told the Turks—Vincent included, this one time. "I need to speak to Colonel Rhapsodos alone." 

"'Colonel'?" Veld asked sharply. 

"He was never formally stripped of his rank," Vincent provided. "As far as I know, that means he's still a colonel. I'll stake out the door to make sure he doesn't get away." His left hand deposited something small and metallic on a pile of papers on my desk as he ushered the others out and closed the door behind them. 

"Is that a key for these?" Genesis asked, jingling his handcuffs. "Where did he get it?" 

"You would have to ask him, but I would guess that he either asked Veld for one or picked Reno's pocket." I picked it up and unlocked the cuffs, then caught them as Genesis tried to throw them at the wall. "You're going to have to put them back on before you leave, you know, so don't play with them too much." 

He scowled and peeled back the sleeves of his coat to rub his wrists, pretending that the cuffs had chafed him through his gloves. And I was familiar enough with Genesis to know that it _was_ pretense. "So? What did you want to talk about? Or do you intend to try to debrief me?" His snort told me exactly what he thought of that. He'd always been the sort of person to wear his emotions on his sleeve. 

"Do I need an excuse to speak to my friend?" It came out sounding a bit flat. The truth was that now that I had Genesis alone, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say to him. There was a gaping empty space in the room that we were both trying to pretend wasn't there. I was ignoring it hard as I put Masamune on her stand behind my desk and gently propped Rapier beside her, then sat down in my chair. 

"It's all wrong, isn't it? 'Geal's gone, I'm a freak twice over, and you're refusing to be anything in particular while pretending that everything's fine." Genesis flopped into the visitor's chair on the far side of my desk and ran a hand through his hair. "I always knew you were a stubborn bastard, Seph, but I never thought you would decide to mount a war against unwanted labels, of all things. It would be hilarious if it didn't hit so close to home." 

"Are you alright?" It was the question Angeal would have asked, if he'd been here. Or Zack. 

"Physically, mentally, or spiritually?" Genesis waved the question away before I could answer it. "Physically I seem to be fine. My shoulder, not to mention all the other little dings and nicks I've picked up since, healed completely after I took in that materia. In fact, my physical capabilities seem to have increased, although I haven't had the opportunity to do controlled tests to find out how much. I might be able to give you a real run for your money now. Spiritually, only the Goddess knows. Mentally . . . I've been dancing on the ragged edge for so long I'm not sure I remember what it means to be sane, and I have a feeling it's overrated anyway." He smiled dreamily. "After all, I almost got _you_ to come over and join me on the other side. Admit it." 

"Fortunately, Zack and Vincent were able to haul me back. Otherwise, I probably would have decided I could fly and jumped right off the edge of that cliff, with Jenova and Hojo pushing me from behind." There had been a few moments when that had been oh-so-tempting . . . 

"Oh, yes, I understand that feeling all too well. It didn't help that the degradation was making a mess out of my biochemistry. I was so angry all the time . . ." Genesis shook his head. "It feels like a nightmare now. This room is so exactly the same as it was before I left that if this stupid chair were just a bit more comfortable, I'd think that I'd fallen asleep in here while waiting for you to finish your paperwork and had a really terrible dream. And that 'Geal had just stepped out to get some Wutainese . . ." 

"Don't." I rubbed the bridge of my nose. If I had only understood what was going on sooner, then maybe Angeal truly would have been here . . . No. Second-guessing myself wouldn't help either. "What kind of shape was Hojo in the last time you saw him?" 

"Something rather bluish and tentacular. Oh, you mean _mentally_ ," Genesis continued as I gave him a Look. "Fairly far around the bend, but not so far he had become incapable of reason. Not yet. Of course, he was fairly far around the bend to start with . . ." 

"There's a difference between being a psychopath and being irrational," I pointed out. "As long as he can think with some degree of clarity, Hojo will remain dangerous." 

"I used to thank the Goddess every month that I was assigned to Hollander and not to him," Genesis admitted. 

"Do you have any idea what he's trying to do?" 

"Not beyond what I've already told you." 

There is a Wutainese curse that invites Leviathan to inflict your enemy with a thousand boils. It slipped past my lips for the first time since the end of the war. And for once, Genesis didn't laugh as I spoke it. 

"For what it's worth, I dispute your assertion that Hojo's obsession has always been you," he drawled instead. "It's always been about proving himself superior _through_ you." 

A subtle difference, but an interesting one. I turned it over in my mind, considering it. "Doing anything through me means that he needs to control me. Then whatever he's working on . . . is a plan to regain control." 

"And in the meanwhile, Rufus and Fuhito and the rest of AVALANCHE all have their own agendas. Although I think they all feel they'd be well-served by getting rid of you. Not that they have much of a chance, really. They don't know what Jenova was, or what having even half of her power means _you_ are." 

"I don't really know either, Gen. Tell me." 

When he had superior knowledge, Genesis was never able to resist flaunting it. "The old list of Immortalis was written in order from weakest to strongest. Do you know what the last few names on it were? _Knights of the Round_ , _Zirconaide_ , _Jenova_ , _Minerva_ , _Chaos_. Minerva never incarnates—she is the Goddess who watches over the world from the Lifestream, and preserves it. Normally, Jenova was the strongest Immortalis to walk free in the world. That's why she thought she could challenge all the others virtually alone. You're not complete, but you're still roughly on a par with Bahamut or Shenlong. You've gotten a little lazy, though. I suppose it's because it's been a while since you last had a single opponent who could challenge you." Genesis smirked. 

I matched him. "You've only seen Vincent fight once." 

"Your pet Turk? Is he really that good? And you seem to have developed a considerable trust in him in a very short time. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were in love." 

I raised an eyebrow. "What if I told you that I am?" 

"I'd laugh," Genesis said solemnly. 

I kept looking at him, without saying anything, and his jaw slowly sagged. 

"Wait, don't tell me you're actually serious, Seph! You and a failed experiment of Hojo's?" 

"Who else would you expect me to choose?" 

"I . . . don't know. I've never seen you demonstrate an interest in anyone before. Ten minutes ago, I couldn't even have said whether you were attracted to men, women, or chocobos." Genesis made a one-handed gesture, as though flicking away an unpleasant thought. 

I shrugged. "I needed someone I couldn't break and who didn't need me to explain why I am the way I am. That doesn't leave a lot of candidates." 

"Don't tell me you logicked out who to fall in love with. That never works." 

"It was more of a rationalization after the fact," I said wryly. "Don't worry. It started with a purely emotional drive to monopolize Vincent's time and keep him away from other people." 

"Jealous? You? Ha! Amazing. And congratulations. So are you on top, or is he? Or maybe you take turns." 

"Things haven't gotten quite that far along yet." I found myself considering what it might feel like to be penetrated by Vincent, and decided that I felt neither repelled by nor especially attracted to the idea. Would he enjoy it if I ordered him to fuck me? Or perhaps tying him down and then impaling myself on his erection would work better. And now I was daydreaming about seeing that look on his face again, the one of glaze-eyed non-concentration he'd worn as he orgasmed under my touch. Even with Genesis staring at me and grinning knowingly, I couldn't entirely banish the image. "We only realized our interest in each other was mutual last night, Gen." 

"Did I interrupt your honeymoon? Oh dear." Genesis was wearing a crooked expression that Zack had once described in my hearing as the red-head's "sorry-not-sorry" grin. 

"He and I don't need to rush things," I said pointedly. I'd seldom known Genesis to have the same person in his bed two nights running. 

"And I'd bet you both turn out to be faithful-unto-death types, as well. Do you have any idea how _boring_ that is?" 

"I'm sure you'll be glad to make up for us," I said dryly. "Although I always thought you were the romantic among the three of us." 

"No, that would have been 'Geal." 

And suddenly we were both very aware of the empty space in here again as we both fumbled for a new topic. There was going to be a gap and a painful sore spot between us for a very long time, I suspected, worse than the one that had developed between Angeal and I after Genesis had left Shinra. That gap had never had a chance to close, though. Angeal had vanished first, and then died. 

"That sword of Susano-o's," I began after a long silence. 

"What, this?" Suddenly, the whiplike sword was in Genesis' hands, and he was offering it to me across the desk. "That slack-jawed expression almost makes you look cute. I can call Serpent-Slayer to me because it's Susano-o's bonded weapon, although it isn't suited to my style. I suppose I'll have to have Rapier modified to accommodate the materia instead, but there hasn't been an opportunity yet." 

I scowled and accepted the sword, flipping it over in my hands. Three linked pairs of materia sockets were arranged along the hilt, filled with a mixture of green and purple. Then there were two linked closed sockets embedded in the blade segment closest to the hilt. 

I ran my fingers over the materia, identifying each. Barrier paired with All, then Destruct, Contain, and Restore with another All. As for the two in the sealed slots, I couldn't identify them, but I recognized them. After all, Masamune bore the same combination of a Support materia linked with an odd opalescent one that I had never seen anywhere else. 

"That's a conservative selection of spells, for you," I commented. 

Genesis laughed. "Oh, please. They're the original Susano-o's picks, not mine. He was more of a physical fighter than I am, hence the preference for support and healing magic over attacks. If he'd been just a bit better at spells overall, he probably would have loaded that thing up with Luck Plusses or something and not bothered with the magic at all, but he was half-assed enough that casting through materia was faster." 

_How do you cast a spell without materia?_ I wanted to ask, but I could only deal with so much of Genesis' superiority at a time. I'd figure it out sooner or later, assuming that I had the ability. 

I laid Serpent-Slayer on the desk between us. If those materia were what made that odd sword a "bonded weapon", and if that designation meant the owner could summon it, did that mean I could call Masamune to me? I curled the fingers of my left hand loosely, miming a familiar grip, and narrowed my eyes in concentration, picturing the sword in my hand, remembering the weight, the texture of the hilt under my fingers . . . 

_Come,_ I willed, and something snapped into place and the weight in my hand was no longer a phantom. 

The look Genesis gave me was inscrutable. "She really is yours, isn't she? I don't think that's ever happened before, an Immortalis' bonded weapon being passed on to someone else. Or at least, Susano-o had never heard of it happening." 

"Jenova's sword," I said quietly, and spun my chair so that I could sheathe her and return her to her stand. 

"Jenova's sword and Jenova's legacy—the real Jenova's, from before she invented an exotic Cetra-killing virus that turned her brains to snot. Are you sure you can handle it, Seph?" 

I shrugged. "I have no choice. Either I 'handle it', as you say, or Vincent shoots me." 

Genesis' eyes widened. "A mutual suicide pact. You _seriously_ made a mutual suicide pact with your Turk lover. I take it back—you're more of a closet romantic than Angeal ever was." He shook his head, as though for emphasis. 

We both went silent as we heard two pairs of boots enter the outer office. The knock on the door came a moment later. 

"General? We'd kinda like to report, if that's okay." 

I repressed a sigh. "Come in, Zack." It was probably just as well we were being interrupted, anyway. Greatly though I might have missed Genesis, I'd always found it difficult to spend too much time alone with him. Without Angeal there to mediate, I think we both brought out the worst in each other. Zack and Vincent were likely going to have to take over the job of keeping us from each other's throats. Not that Genesis and Vincent were likely to get along all that well either. 

The door opened to reveal Zack and Cloud, with Vincent looming silently behind them. When Zack caught sight of Genesis sprawling in the visitor's chair, he pushed pass the blond Third Class and reached out to grab red leather lapels. 

"You son of a bitch! How dare you show up back here like nothing's happened?!" 

Vincent, ever-alert, pushed Cloud the rest of the way inside and got the door closed. He also grabbed Zack's wrist, keeping the younger man from hoisting Genesis straight out of his chair. 

"Damn it, Vince! Let me go! _That's an order, Soldier!_ " 

"Vincent isn't in your chain of command, Zack, even if you technically outrank him," I said. "Also, Genesis is _my_ prisoner, and I didn't give you permission to rough him up. Nor do I understand why you're making the attempt." 

"Are you kidding me, Seph? If he hadn't . . . then Angeal . . ." 

I shook my head. "Genesis was no more responsible for Angeal's death than you or I." _And no less, either_ —but even I could tell that wasn't what Zack needed to hear right now. "Ultimately, Hollander killed him. And Jenova." _And his own weakness, by preventing him from making his peace with what he was._

"Calm down, Zack," Cloud added unexpectedly. "I can't say that I know every single detail of what happened, but based on what I _do_ know, he's right." 

Zack frowned. Looked at me, at Genesis, at Cloud. And finally loosened his grip. Vincent released him the moment he lifted his hands away from Genesis' coat. 

"I don't think I know you, Soldier." Genesis was looking at Cloud. 

"My protege, Cloud Strife," I provided. 

"It's an honour to meet you, Colonel Rhapsodos." Cloud nodded respectfully. 

"Well, Seph, you do seem to have him well-trained. Too bad the puppy's backsliding instead," Genesis drawled. 

Zack growled, looking very . . . puppylike, if the puppy in question happened to be rabid. Meanwhile, I felt the lightest of weights on my right pauldron. Vincent had slipped around the end of the desk to stand at my shoulder, I realized. It was his hand that rested on my armour. 

"I'm not going to let him get away unscathed, Zack," I said. "He's caused more than enough trouble for all of us, even if he wasn't quite in his right mind for most of it. But we need him alive and functioning, or we're going to drown under a tide of monsters before we can taper off the use of mako power." 

It was wrong for Zack to have such an anguished look on his face, I thought. He was no more over Angeal than I was, or Genesis. Perhaps less so, since he was the one his mentor had forced into wielding the sword that had killed him. 

Cloud turned out to be the one who had the solution this time. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around Zack, hugged him, and whispered something to him so quietly that I caught only, " . . . see Aerith, but right now we need to report." 

"Right. Thanks, Spiky." Zack ruffled Cloud's hair and drew himself up straight. "Sorry about that, General. I won't let it happen again." 

"I'll let it go this time," I said. And the next time, and the next . . . but I wasn't going to say that. Admitting out loud that Zack was . . . precious to me . . . felt like it would put him at risk. 

"I might not, though," Genesis drawled. 

"Be careful," I warned him. "I _could_ have you broken down to captain and placed directly under Zack, you know." 

Genesis shuddered theatrically. "I never knew you to be that cruel a man, Sephiroth." 

I ignored him. "Major Fair, I would appreciate that report." Putting us on more formal footing. 

"Yes, sir. We arrived at Cosmo Canyon yesterday afternoon . . ."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was in the middle of the next chapter that I put this story on hold for several months in order to write _Unwinding the Spiral_. Material after this point may be less polished than the earlier chapters.


	62. Chapter 62

**Vincent**

It was the second time I'd followed Sephiroth into a meeting of the Board of Directors, although at least this time I had a better excuse for being there: I was escorting a dangerous prisoner. Who had an amused smile on his face, even though he was unarmed and his hands were cuffed in front of him. At least there wasn't enough space inside the building for Genesis to manifest as Susano-o, although I didn't doubt he'd be able to make a mess of things if he wanted to. 

"General, I think I speak for all of us when I say that this is . . . unexpected," Reeve said. He was still staring, as were Scarlet and Rayleigh. Arcanol and Cid might have been too, for that matter, but they were only here by telepresence from Junon and Rocket Town, respectively. Veld looked amused, although he was doing his best not to show it. 

Arcanol snorted. "Well, out with it—you wouldn't have bothered bringing him _here_ if you were just going to execute him." 

"Correct," Sephiroth said. "I intend to reinstate Genesis Rhapsodos as a SOLDIER officer. Not without penalty—he _has_ been working with AVALANCHE, although there are extenuating circumstances—but we need his skills in combat." 

"Are you out of your _mind_?" Scarlet could certainly screech when she wanted to. 

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. "If I am, it's due to having to travel all over the world on almost no sleep, trying to keep the reactors from being blown up by AVALANCHE or shut down under the sheer weight of all the monsters we've been seeing lately. The latter of which is a problem that Colonel Rhapsodos can help us with, even if he can't be trusted to interact with AVALANCHE unsupervised." 

I hid a smile. So did Veld. And Cid guffawed aloud. 

"Thought you were a pretty fucking stiff stick the first time we met, General, but I might actually get to like you," the pilot said, mock-saluting with a cigarette held between his fingers. 

"Sleep deprivation can damage your judgement," Rayleigh added. "It's dangerous for someone in a position of authority to let it go for too long." 

"What did you have in mind, General?" Trust Reeve to handle the situation calmly. I understood now why everyone had wanted him as the temporary president of Shinra, Inc. 

"The sentence of execution will be suspended for the time being, but not stricken from the record," Sephiroth said. "Colonel Rhapsodos will be confined to certain portions of the Shinra Building unless authorized to go on a mission, or escorted by a senior Turk, fellow First Class SOLDIER, or other person whom I deem acceptable. The normal First Class privilege of refusing missions is also suspended for him. He will issue a public apology for his actions, the text of which will be approved by the Board." 

"You can't be serious." It was the first thing Rhapsodos had said since we'd left the elevator. 

Sephiroth gave him a frosty look. "Did you think I was going to make this easy for you? You've all but destroyed SOLDIER's reputation as well as your own. Since you've always enjoyed being in the public eye so much, I'm tasking you with restoring it." 

Genesis scowled, while Sephiroth returned his attention to the Board. 

"He will also be stripped of seniority and attendant pay and privileges," Sephiroth continued. "I would strip him of rank, but I need him to resume his administrative duties . . . so I will be promoting Zack Fair a little earlier than I intended, to ensure Genesis does not end up in overall command of SOLDIER should something happen to me. If anyone can suggest an additional appropriate punishment that would not reduce his usefulness to me, I am willing to entertain it." 

"So you're going to keep him under house arrest and use him as slave labour." Arcanol sounded approving. "For how long?" 

"At the moment, I would judge that double the amount of time he was missing should be sufficient to allow the public outcry to fade. Provided he does his job and keeps his head down." Sephiroth shot Genesis a sharp look, and the red-head smiled crookedly. "Is this acceptable to the Board?" 

"In favour?" Reeve asked, and everyone except Scarlet raised their hands. "It looks like you have your helper, General." 

Sephiroth nodded. "Free him, please, Vincent." 

I unlocked the cuffs and caught them as they fell away from Rhapsodos' wrists. The red-head rubbed those, expression inscrutable. 

"General, I believe that when you called this meeting, you said there were two items of business." 

"Unfortunately, yes. Hojo had left Wutai by the time we arrived. He's at the Great Northern Crater, along with Rufus Shinra and some of AVALANCHE's leaders. We're going to need an airship—there's no getting there on foot at this season without wasting an immense amount of time and possibly freezing to death, and no place for other aircraft to refuel even if the old landing strip is intact." 

Cid grinned. "An airship, I can get for you. I've got one I was developing in between working on the rocket—to blow off steam, you know. Just tell me where and when." 

"I had intended to leave tomorrow," Sephiroth said. 

"Ha," the astronaut said. "Not wasting any time, I see. Well, works for me. We just had to put the launch back another week—something screwed up in the oxygen system . . . Anyway, I should be able to get the _Highwind_ —that's her name—here by tomorrow morning, so be ready." 

"We will," Sephiroth said crisply. "Unless the Board wishes to refuse me permission to go." 

"Don't worry. We're not that crazy." Arcanol's image on-screen offered a wink. 

"Ah. My business is complete, then. Unless someone else has something they wish to put forward, I need to go unseal Colonel Rhapsodos' quarters for him. Also, Dr. Rayleigh, I would like you to examine him and make certain that he has recovered from the unfortunate condition that precipitated this mess." 

"Understood, General. I should be able to fit him in tomorrow." 

"Thank you." 

Genesis' apartment turned out to be B-31, right across the hallway from the one I'd requisitioned for myself but had yet to enter. There was a length of yellow "crime scene" tape across the door, although it appeared to be more of a warning than a serious barrier. The little indicator light beside the lock blinked red until Sephiroth swiped his keycard and entered something on the keypad, at which point it returned to its usual steady amber. He nodded to Genesis, who fished through his pockets for a moment before pulling out a keycard of his own and swiping it. The lock obediently beeped and went green. 

"You could give me my sword back, you know," Genesis said, and Sephiroth slid the extra blade and harness from his shoulder and placed it in his friend's hands. 

"Don't do anything I wouldn't," the General warned. 

Genesis snorted. "Well, that will definitely reduce my scope of action a great deal. Unnaturally so, in fact, since you don't even do mundane things like drink dumbapple brandy or greet your neighbours when you pass each other in the hallway." 

"Gen . . ." Sephiroth looked like he was getting a headache. 

"Would 'stay out of trouble' work better?" I asked. 

Genesis looked from Lucrecia's son to me, and chuckled. "Protective, aren't you? Well, I suppose that isn't unexpected, under the circumstances. Look after him, will you, Vincent?" His eyes weren't laughing at all, I noted. I gave him a short nod. 

Genesis waved casually at both of us, and entered his apartment. Walking straight through the crime scene tape, which he had apparently forgotten about. It broke apart in the middle, and one of the dangling ends caught in the door as it fell shut. 

I laid my hand against what was now my door. "I'd offer you coffee, but I doubt I have any unless Shinra stocks the kitchens in every occupied apartment. Still, if you'd like to come in for a moment . . ." 

Our eyes met and locked, and Sephiroth's voice became a rumbling almost-purr as he spoke. "Thank you. I think I will." 

The lock beeped open obediently when I scanned my keycard. The door, open, revealed an entryway that was free of dust or any significant furniture. A short row of hooks on one wall provided a place for outerwear, and two open-topped cardboard boxes lay just below. One appeared to contain the clothes I had left in the room I'd shared with Cloud, the other the few additional possessions I'd accumulated since my return to Shinra, but hadn't taken with me to Wutai. Beside them was the duffel bag I'd taken on the mission, unopened. 

I ignored the luggage, such as it was, and walked forward through the doorway into the living room, which was occupied by a couch and a single armchair in neutral colours, a TV set, and a glass-topped coffee table. To the left, a glass-brick half-wall defined a dining area (one table, four chairs) and a kitchen. Other doors offered access to two bedrooms, a bath, and a small room sparsely furnished as an office. 

"Standard furnishings," Sephiroth said quietly. "You can, of course, replace them with whatever you wish at your own expense, if the spartan-hotel style of decorating isn't to your liking." He hesitated, then added, "Zack will almost certainly want to throw you a housewarming party when things are a little more settled. I would suggest acquiring more chairs before then, or he may steal them haphazardly from other units on this level and forget to put them back." 

"I suppose asking him to give up the idea is out of the question," I said wryly. I didn't expect I would get rid of the existing furniture, but I would need to add a few odds and ends. A proper gun safe, for one. And a rack for extremely long swords, since I was likely to have a lot of SOLDIERs wandering in and out. And, yes, enough living room furniture that I could manage if Zack decided to take over the sofa. And some carpet—all the floors were bare faux-wood, or linoleum. 

A quick check of the kitchen showed that I had been right: there was no coffee, although Shinra had provided a coffee _maker_ along with the larger appliances, and a basic set of dishes, cookware, and utensils. I also had a set of the familiar grey-brown towels, similarly-coloured curtains on the windows, and the beds in both bedrooms each had sheets, a single blanket, and a thin foam pillow. The overall result was livable, but only just. Sephiroth's description of "spartan hotel" fit the aesthetic as well as anything. 

It was also bugged, but I had been expecting that. Sephiroth followed me as I wandered from room to room, extracting stray listening devices from their hiding places, and at one point found one that I'd missed, stuck behind the upper lip of an air vent in the office. 

"How did you know where that was?" I asked as he dropped it into my hand. 

"My hearing, in addition to being very acute, extends into abnormal ranges. I can often detect electromagnetic fields by the hum they create . . . and I couldn't think of a good reason for one to be in the air vent." 

Interesting. Another thing I hadn't even known might be within my physical capacity. 

"What are you going to do with those?" Sephiroth asked, nodding at the eight bugs now resting in the palm of my hand. "Give Veld another bowl of pistachios?" 

I considered as I weighed them. "No, I think I'll have them gift-wrapped and sent to Reno." The only question was whether I would put them in small individual boxes, or all together in a series of nested boxes with each layer individually wrapped. I was leaning toward the latter. 

"Do all Turks play those sorts of games?" 

"Most do. I've known a few exceptions . . . but only a few. It's a stressful job, and we all have to find ways of dealing with it if we don't want to end up being dealt with ourselves as 'unacceptable risk factors'." 

I went back to the entryway and rummaged through my belongings until I found the shielded box I'd gotten from Veld. They could stay there listening to each other for now. 

When I straightened up again, Sephiroth caught me against him in a loose embrace, and I let myself bring my good hand up to run my fingers through his silken hair. I was a bit surprised when I felt him undo the tie that held my hair in place at the nape of my neck, letting it cascade down over my shoulders. Leather creaked softly as he shifted his weight. I was going to end up developing a fetish for the damned stuff, but right now I didn't mind in the slightest. 

"There are going to be a lot of times like these," he said softly. "The two of us, and the night before a mission." 

"It goes with the job," I pointed out. 

"So it does." A hesitation, as a gloved hand ran through my hair and down the length of my spine to my tailbone. "I'm not even sure what I want from you." 

"We'll figure it out." I took his arm, and he let me pull him out into the living room and over to the beige sofa. When I let go again, he unhooked Masamune from his harness and set her on the coffee table, then sank down with a soft breath that couldn't quite be called a sigh. I sat down beside him and began to unbuckle the straps that held his pauldrons in place. "I've been meaning to ask you—why don't you ever wear a shirt?" 

Sephiroth shrugged. "I don't need the insulation, and it just seems like wasted effort. If you want me to—" 

I shook my head. "It was just idle curiosity." _And I don't want other people looking at you . . ._ but I knew that was foolish. He was a public figure. There was no way I would ever have him entirely to myself. 

I lifted his armour away and laid it beside his sword. When I leaned back again, I found his arm curling around my shoulders. I scooted a little closer, so that our legs were touching, and placed my hand on his leather-clad thigh. Claiming him. 

"You should move in here when this is over," I said. Wondering if I was out of my mind, but at the same time, realizing that this really was something I wanted. 

Green eyes were hidden for a moment, in a long, slow blink. "It's been a long time since I shared space with anyone. It wasn't . . . a comfortable thing . . . then, but perhaps . . ." 

"Having the military assign you to the same barracks or tent as a group of other men isn't the same thing as moving in with someone you care about," I said, reflecting that I was, in many ways, the worst person to be explaining normal human behaviour to anyone. Given how long it had been since my life had been anything resembling normal. And I'd been a different person, then. "It would make it easier to spend time together, but I'll understand if it isn't what you want. Or if you need more time to understand what you do want." 

"This is all oddly like my first attempts to speak Wutainese," Sephiroth said wryly. 

"With a limited vocabulary, and wrestling with the grammar?" 

He nodded. 

"That puts me in the position of trying to relearn a language I haven't spoken in a long time," I admitted. "And I may be pushing things faster than I should." 

"It's understandable. We're both putting our lives at risk on a regular basis. It would be . . . frustrating . . . if this were all to come to nothing because we didn't have enough time, but . . ." 

I nodded. Shrugged. And we just sat there together for a long moment. 

"Will you join me for dinner?" I asked. 

"I believe Zack would describe that as a 'date'," Sephiroth said. 

"Only if you want it to be." 

"Then, yes. And . . . yes. Although I believe Zack would also say we're doing things in the wrong order." 

I snorted, feeling a smile creep over my face. "Indeed."


	63. Chapter 63

**Cloud**

"I'm sorry, Soldier Strife, but the schedule is what it is." 

I gritted my teeth. I was trying very, very hard not to scream like a three-year-old brat, because I knew that would destroy any chance I had of getting what I wanted. 

"Please let me speak to Dr. Rayleigh," I said. 

"She'll give you the same answer I would," said the junior scientist—or maybe he was a lab technician, how was I supposed to know?—who had already told me "no". Three or four times. 

"Just let me talk to her. If she tells me no, then I'll leave." And I would be glad to get off this floor. My strongest memory of Shinra's Science Department would likely always involve crouching behind the receptionist's desk while Hojo stared straight at me. It still gave me the shivers. 

"And if I don't, you're not going to shut up and go away, are you? Fine. _Fine._ Her office is over there." He pointed at a door. 

I went over and knocked. "Dr. Rayleigh? May I come in?" 

"Soldier Strife? Yes, of course you may." 

I opened the door on a very ordinary-looking Shinra office, smaller than Sephiroth's—or maybe it just gave that impression because Rayleigh had more furniture. Bookshelves. Filing cabinets. Even a potted plant—the first one I'd seen in Shinra Tower that wasn't plastic. 

"What can I do for you?" Rayleigh asked from behind her desk. 

There was no point in mincing words. "I want the schedule for my next mako shot moved up. To tonight." 

"That would be a very bad idea." 

I gritted my teeth. "I'm over the side effects of the last one. I can sleep it off tonight and be ready for tomorrow. I need to be as strong as possible. _Please._ " 

I'd hoped that there would be time for me to at least get the full series of Third Class shots, but time had run out, and I still wasn't strong enough to help Tifa or Zack or Sephiroth. Except for Mom, all of my most precious people were either going to be heading into the Great North Crater to fight, or were already there and in danger. And they might even change my orders at the last minute and leave me behind. What good would a half-assed Third Class be on a trip to the heart of the Northern Continent? Even the monsters there were way out of my league, and the things we might end up facing were supposed to be worse. 

Rayleigh shook her head. "You may not be feeling the effects anymore, but I guarantee that your body hasn't fully assimilated the mako from that last shot yet. If we gave you another one now, it might take you several days to recover. You're on a double-speed regimen already. I won't agree to push things any more than that. Nor will anyone else from this department." 

I gave her a desperate look. 

"Cloud—may I call you that? Look. I have some idea how you're feeling. My mother is going to be beyond angry if Uncle Vincent gets himself killed before she can see him again . . . but I can't do even as much as you can to help. I can't go on the raid. My place is here. And the best thing I can do, for the sake of the success and survival of everyone who _is_ going, is accept that and not bother them or make them any more conflicted." 

I wanted to scream. Or to hit someone . . . but I knew hitting Shinra's Director of Research wasn't going to score me any points here. Instead, I forced myself to nod. "Sorry to have bothered you, then." And I turned and left, telling myself that I wasn't running away, that there was just nothing to be done. 

I couldn't bear the thought of going back to my quarters—all mine, now, since Vincent had moved out and no new Thirds had been inducted since me. I didn't think I'd be able to rest. So when I re-entered the elevator, I picked the SOLDIER floor instead, with a half-formed intention to do katas or something until I'd worn myself out enough that I'd be able to get some sleep. 

Instead, my feet took me to one of the Training Rooms—the oldest one, at the back, that you needed helmets to use—and I decided that might not be such a bad idea. Zack had showed me how to set up the controls, and I picked a Northern Continent scenario and put a helmet on. 

It started out easy, with rabbit-things and insects and wolves, and, well, I was a Nibelheim boy. These might be a different colour from the ones I was used to, but they were still wolves. There were ice canyons, an objective I was supposed to get to, and a time limit, so in between monsters, I ran. There were a lot of wolves, and after a while, I came across some floating green lizard-things whose name I intended to look up when I was done here. I won't say that any of them were easy opponents, but none of them were _too_ bad. And I was used to moving through frozen terrain, so I was making good time. 

Then I rounded the last corner, and a huge fist almost shattered my skull. I yelped and jumped back, because there was this big monster, like a kid's cartoon version of a robot except a lot nastier, and it was obvious it didn't want me around. How the hell was I supposed to take on something like this when I was already tired from the other monsters? I mentally enumerated my materia, but the only direct attack type I had was Ice, which probably wouldn't help. 

And I didn't think fast enough, because the thing's second punch connected and threw me back into an ice wall. It might have done worse if I hadn't managed to get Echo in the way and take part of the blow on her flat. 

I knew that wasn't going to help me again when the creature lined up for a second punch, though. I gritted my teeth and braced myself, waiting for the "Simulation _Fail_ " text to pop up in front of me in bright yellow letters. It wouldn't be the first time I'd seen it. 

_Clang!_

"Y'know, Spiky, this is supposed to be a squad simulation for Thirds. Even Seconds would usually take it in pairs. I'm pretty impressed that you got this far alone." 

"Zack?" 

He was standing there with the Buster Sword out, pushing back on the monster's fist. "Were you expecting Seph or something? Sorry if I'm a disappointment." 

I shook my head. "Of course not. I wouldn't expect to find the General here, anyway. He's probably up to his neck in last-minute preparation stuff. I'm surprised you aren't." 

Zack shrugged. "I've got half an hour to kill before Aerith makes it back up here. So let's finish this bozo!" 

"Does it ever stop trying to squish you?" I asked as I dodged to the left. 

"Nope! This is how ice golems actually fight—well, the big semi-uniques like this one, anyway. I think the little ones are less physical." Zack caught the next punch on the flat of the Buster Sword, and was once more able to keep both feet planted despite the strength of the blow. "Go get him, Spiky! I'll keep him off your back." 

"It would help if this thing looked like it had any weak spots," I grumbled. _Or if I'd checked the Shinra Military Monster Index before diving in._ Too late for that now, of course. 

Joints were good targets on armoured or tough-skinned creatures if you couldn't find anything else, I knew. And eyes. 

Echo was a good sword. She left a mark across the monster's chest, although I couldn't swing her with enough force to penetrate its armour. I ducked and dodged and managed to get a point into the left elbow joint and wrench it apart. That left the creature's forearm dangling, supported only by the armour on the far side. When I hit it again, the forearm fell off, leaving an exposed knob of greyish bone. It didn't bleed, which was a bit weird, but I didn't have time to worry about it. 

One nice thing was that, despite its humanoid form, the giant ice golem didn't seem to be all that bright, since it was still trying to swing at me with the arm that wasn't there. If I took off its other arm, then maybe . . . 

There! There was the opening. I stabbed forward, although Echo wasn't really a stabbing type of sword in her combined mode. Skewer the arm, and twist the blade just so, and . . . 

The simulated monster roared as I finished, er, _dis-arming_ it. And cast some kind of ice spell. 

"Damn!" I reeled back with my arm in front of my face as my skin stung with cold. I still got frost on my eyelashes, and my throat stung as I drew in a breath. _Colder than a mountainpeak at midwinter,_ as the Nibelheim saying goes, and Shinra's equipment was doing a better job of simulating it than I really would have liked. 

Zack stepped forward then, and swung the Buster Sword, chopping the golem into two pieces along the shoulder-to-hip diagonal. It fell apart and dissolved into pixels. A moment later, so did everything else around us, and _Simulation Complete_ flashed in front of my eyes. 

I pulled off the VR helmet, discovering as I did that my hair really did have frost in it. 

"Just how far do they take the realism in these things?" I asked out loud. 

Zack laughed. "Well, they equip the room with some basic materia, but you aren't supposed to get more than a little sunburned or frostbitten. Just enough that you won't get your moves down pat against a fire-breathing critter in here, and then be surprised when you meet one out in the field 'cause the breath's actually hot." 

"That makes sense, I guess." The frost was starting to melt and drip down my nose. I thought I'd left that kind of garbage behind in Nibelheim. 

"Anyway, Spiky, you did really well there. Nearly a Second-Class performance, and you're still a couple of shots short of an average Third's mako level." 

I scowled. "Yeah, I know." 

"Oh- _ho_! I'd been wondering why you were here, instead of turning in early. You're worried about tomorrow!" 

"I'm not worried about getting hurt," I said, forcing myself to speak precisely. "I'm afraid of not being able to _help_." 

Zack's smile faded. "Oh, yeah. That one. I remember how much it sucks. But, Spiky . . . the truth is, you're a lot better than I was as a Third. I couldn't keep my mind on anything for more than three seconds at a time—kind of like a touch-me on hypers. You've got the focus I never did. And you think on your feet. That would make you useful even if you sucked with weapons altogether, and you don't—hell, you're practically a natural swordsman. I know guarding the medical team isn't the most glamourous job or anything, but it's a necessary one. And that's where we're going to be sending Tifa as soon as we find her, even if she looks okay. Gotta make sure Hojo didn't do something nasty she wasn't aware of, right?" 

"If you're trying to be reassuring, you're not doing a very good job," I said. The thought of Hojo getting his hands on Tifa . . . He'd had Aerith for _one day_ , and managed to make her so sick in that time that she'd almost had to have her arm cut off. 

The thought of Tifa without an arm . . . I shook my head violently, because I didn't even want to consider that. Tifa would rather die, I knew. 

"Try not to think about that too hard, whatever it was," Zack advised me. "You look like someone dropped an icecube down the back of your collar." 

"I'm starting to think I'm not going to get much sleep," I admitted. 

Zack rolled his eyes and vented an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. Come with me, then, and I'll loan you a Mystify materia. You'll be able to knock yourself right out with a Sleepel." 

"I'm not sure that's a good idea." But I followed him anyway. 

"On the night before a mission like this? Are you kidding me? Just make sure your alarm's set before you do it." 

"There is no way Angeal taught you that." 

"Heh, you're good. Actually, it was Reno." 

" _Reno?_ Turk, red hair, always looks like he slept in his clothes? That Reno?" 

"Well . . . yeah. Is there a problem with that?" 

Somehow, I managed to keep from hiding my face in my hand. "Only that you believed him. About anything." 

"He isn't such a bad guy, Spiky. Really. Or do all Turks still spook you? Vincent would probably be hurt if you told him that." 

"Vincent isn't a Turk anymore," I pointed out as we got into the elevator. 

"Their kind of training doesn't really wear off." Zack pressed the button for the thirty-second floor, and the elevator started to head down. 

"I don't think it's their training that bothers me. Not really." And yeah, I'd made the mistake, while we were still rooming together, of asking Vincent about his old job. Once. That had been enough to make me wake up at weird o'clock in the morning three nights running, and I'd never asked again. 

_You take orders,_ Vincent had said. _And you don't argue, no matter what they tell you to do._

_How is that different from SOLDIER?_ I'd asked. 

_The military has the concept of an illegal order. The Turks don't. If a Turk is told to shoot a baby, burn a town, sabotage a civilian airliner . . . it gets done, full stop. Without question or complaint. It isn't a job for someone who's capable of compassion. Or remorse. I suppose that's why I failed, in the end._

It was the _burn a town_ part that had figured in my endless parade of nightmares. Nibelheim on fire and strewn with corpses. Like the image was burned into my brain, even though it had never actually happened. 

The elevator stopped, and Zack led me back out, along the hallway to his quarters. Except that the hallway wasn't empty. Aerith was waiting there, smiling at us as we approached. She had Nanaki with her. 

"Hey," Zack greeted her, and stepped forward for a quick hug. It made me look away. I mean, I didn't begrudge them what they had—it made them both so happy. It was just that seeing them together made me remember Tifa and why she _wasn't_ here. 

"Hey yourself," Aerith said, smiling back at him. "Hello, Cloud." 

"Hi, Aerith. Nanaki." That was the best I could manage, and it sounded dispirited even to me, but what was I supposed to do? 

"I was expecting you, but not your bodyguard," Zack said, filling in the silence like he always did, while I gritted my teeth against the thought that _Tifa_ was supposed to be Aerith' bodyguard. That was how she'd gotten dragged into this in the first place! Well, that . . . and me. "What gives?" 

"He's coming with us tomorrow, so I thought it would be easier if he stayed at the Tower rather than down in the Slums." 

"I can take the couch," Nanaki offered. "Or the floor, if that's all you have." 

Zack blinked. "Wait, what? Coming with _us_? Tomorrow? Since when are you going anywhere tomorrow?" 

Aerith gave him a level look. "Since the Planet wants me there, and since I asked General Sephiroth to put me on the medical team." 

"And he actually okayed that?" At her nod, Zack scowled. "Wait here—I need to go give him a piece of my mind." 

Aerith glared at him and put her hands on her hips. "Zack Fair! You were the one who taught me how to use a staff—you _know_ I'm not some delicate little flower who only knows how to hide at the bottom of a hole! It isn't like I'm going to be on the front lines with you and the General. I'm going to be at the back, looking after people. With Cloud and Nanaki—don't tell me you don't trust them either! And . . . well . . . I'm worried about Tifa too." 

Zack was doing his best kicked-puppy imitation now. "I didn't know it meant that much to you. Actually, I guess I didn't think. Sorry." 

"You wanted to protect me," Aerith said, with her familiar gentle smile. "And it's flattering that you do, and it's really helped me more than once . . . but I can't let you do it this time." 

"Give her materia," I suggested. My voice cracked on the last word. Damn adolescence. "I mean, she's good with them, right, Zack? You always say so. So giving her the best ones you've got . . . it might help." 

"That's . . . actually a pretty good idea. Thanks, Spiky." 

Aerith gave me a quick smile and a nod. I think she'd figured it out—that she knew as well as I did that Zack was happiest when doing _something_ to help, even if it wasn't a very big something. 

So I went off to bed feeling better, I guess. Just a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Cloud, getting nightmares from parallel timelines.
> 
> And yeah, Aerith and Zack do argue a bit sometimes. Just not very often.


	64. Chapter 64

**Zack**

_I hate the smell of jet fuel in the mo-o-orning._ Essai had used to sing that whenever we got dumped out of bed at four-thirty and bundled onto an airship or a plane or a chopper for a mission. Now Essai was dead and the AVALANCHE bastard responsible for it was, I hoped, finally going to go down. And I was still getting dumped out of bed way too early so that I could go on missions. 

This was kind of like an all-star mission, though. For starters, we had all the surviving First Classes along, even Genesis, although he looked kind of grumpy. Then again, he'd always liked his beauty sleep. We had a Shinra Director commanding our airship. _And_ we had all but one of the senior Turks—Cissnei had stayed behind because she still wasn't quite healed up, but Veld, Tseng, Reno, and Rude were all up on the bridge of the _Highwind_ , doing whatever it is that Turks do when they're trying not to get thrown out of a place. We had nearly two-thirds of the Second Class SOLDIERs with us as well. Cloud was the only Third, though. And then there were Aerith, and a quartet of medics with all their gear, and Nanaki. And Reeve's . . . representative. Sephiroth had shot dubious looks at the animatronic cat-on-a-moogle thing when the President Pro Tem had first produced it, but he'd allowed it aboard. 

What I was wondering was how we were going to get _off_ the airship. Sephiroth couldn't be expecting us to jump out with the medics and their gear on our backs, could he? Ugh. And then we would have to walk back to town when the mission was over. Seph _had_ ordered full survival gear. I'd been the one who'd had to make sure it was packed. That made the scenario sloshing around in my head feel all too realistic. 

I got up and started doing squats to try to shake the image out of my head. No one said anything, although Genesis rolled his eyes. Cid Highwind hadn't bothered to assign us cabins or anything, saying that we weren't going to be on board long enough. Instead, rows of benches had been set up in a large room in the airship's belly, and we were supposed to sit there and stay out of the way of the airship's crew. 

I cast sidelong looks at the others. Sephiroth looked bored, but that was no surprise. Vincent looked inscrutable, ditto. Aerith was nervous. I couldn't read Nanaki at all. And Cloud was looking pale and ill—probably motion-sick, since he didn't have quite enough mako in his system yet to settle him completely. He also had a Summon materia in his hands and was turning it over and over again, staring it. 

A Summon. _Immortal seed._ I wondered who that materia had been, back in the days when the Immortalis had roamed Gaia. Hopefully, Cloud wasn't thinking of taking it into himself. The idea made my hair try to stand on end—more than usual, I mean. But I didn't say anything. If he hadn't thought of that, and I reminded him of the possibility by trying to talk him out of it . . . ugh. He'd been so worried last night about being strong enough. 

Aerith was fingering a materia too, the white one her mother had given her. The one that didn't seem to do anything. Like the protomateria Seph was still carrying in his pocket. 

I still didn't understand why the Lifestream had been so gung-ho about delivering it to him. If he'd discovered the reason yet, he hadn't shared it with me. 

Midgar Field to the north of the Northern Continent was a ten-hour trip. Lunch was standard-issue Meals, Transit, packed on trays and warmed in a microwave—not ration bars. I'd insisted on it, and Seph had been willing to give me that much free rein. We'd just finished binning the trash to be discarded later when the public address system crackled to life. " _Colonel Rhapsodos, please come to the bridge._ " 

I blinked—why would they want _Genesis_? Curious, I followed him out. Sephiroth glanced at me as I passed, then went back to whatever he'd been reading on his PHS. Beside him, Vincent looked like he was asleep. 

Genesis opened the door to the bridge and said, "You've found it, then?" 

It was Veld who answered. "According to the records, it should be along the top of that ridge. Are you ready?" 

Genesis chuckled. "It isn't as though there's some difficult preparation required." 

He held up his arm, pointing at the ridge, and a materia flared to life inside the bracer he was wearing. Down below, an air spell (distinguishable from the wind by the faint lines of force it painted in the air) began scouring the snow away to reveal what was underneath. 

The airstrip wasn't in wonderful shape—it had to have been there for years, unmaintained and hidden under the snow, and the pavement was cracking and the paint was almost gone—but it _was_ an airstrip. In the middle of nowhere. The pylons for airship tie-down were at the far end, materializing from under thick layers of white as the spell blasted them clean. There were tongues of rust slopping down over the painted stripes here and there, but overall, they looked intact. 

"I don't get it," I said out loud. 

"It was built back in the day for the expedition that found Jenova," Veld said. 

"Now go back to your friends and sit down, SOLDIER boy," added Highwind, looking at me for the first time. "It's going to be tough to hook those pylons without a ground crew to help, and I don't want some damned fool breaking his leg because we bounced around a bit." 

"Gotcha," I said, and went. 

He was right about it bouncing around. Cloud started to look so green as we ducked and bobbed that Aerith had to hit him with an Esuna. Twice. Being in a room with no windows probably didn't help. But at last we were solidly hooked, and the engines spun down into silence. 

A few moments later, Veld entered the room where we were all doing final checks on our packs. "It's a five-mile hike from here to the entrance of the caverns," he informed us. His suit didn't look nearly as sharp when being worn with a thick jacket, heavy ankle boots, and a fur-lined hat with earflaps. "More vertical than we expected, unfortunately," he added. 

"When this is over, we'll see about commissioning a new land survey," Sephiroth said, securing Masamune across his back. "Form up on the ground," he added to everyone at large. 

He didn't have to tell us twice. I grabbed my jacket—not nearly as heavy as Veld's, but up here in the frozen north, I would have been stupid not to keep my arms covered. Even Sephiroth was wearing a thermal shirt under his long coat, and Vincent had broken out his ratty cape again. Once fully dressed, I went to the ladder and led the way down to the broken concrete pavement. 

The Turks, unlike the medical corpsmen and lower ranking SOLDIERs, didn't have standard assigned cold-weather gear, and their selections made them look a lot less uniform than usual. For instance, Tseng was wearing a quilted jacket the likes of which I'd never seen before, probably from the moutainous areas of Wutai, and Reno was wrapped in at least four separate layers, all of which were a bit on the ragged side. Rude had a blue woolen trenchcoat the exact colour of his suit, a fur hat like Veld's . . . and his sunglasses. Of course. 

Aerith had picked up one of the infantry jackets from somewhere, but Nanaki was still running around bareass, poor guy. I bet he was cold even with the fur. Reeve's cat-on-a-moogle was the only thing that didn't look cold. It had woken up when we'd moored the airship, and was now wandering around offering to tell people's fortunes. It spoke with the weirdest accent, too. Maybe Reeve hadn't been able to get the talking bits of it quite right? 

Sephiroth split us quickly into groups, placing himself in the vanguard with Vincent, Veld, Tseng, and about a quarter of the Seconds. Highwind and his people would be staying with the airship, to make sure it was still there when we got back. I got rear guard, with Genesis, Reno, Rude, and some more Seconds. The remaining SOLDIERs were on either side of our group, with the medics protected in the center. Cloud was on the left flank, looking scared and determined. 

A five-mile march in the freezing cold over unimproved snow-covered terrain is . . . well, it isn't fun. We nearly lost one guy down a crevasse that had been hidden under a nice thick blanket of white, but Vincent grabbed the poor bastard by the shoulder and dragged him back from the brink. Reno spent the whole time complaining—not just about the cold, but about the pack he was carrying, even though it was a lightweight, an infantry thirty-pounder, and not one of the SOLDIER packs. Apparently he thought it was beneath his dignity to carry his own food and bedroll, even though he knew as well as everyone else that we'd probably be spending the night at the caves. 

Honestly, if I'd been the one in the lead, I probably would have walked right past the cave entrance. Fortunately, Seph was a better pathfinder than I would ever be, blasting the opening clear with an air-elemental spell (fire might have been more efficient, but it also would have turned everything into soup by melting snow, and we'd all been warned to be careful where we used it). We all hurried inside—it might not have been that much warmer, but at least it was out of the wind. Then we had to pause while the corpsmen got out their night-vision goggles, and Genesis moved forward to join the vanguard. We'd be travelling without light from here, and hoping that the red-coated SOLDIER knew where he was going. 

One thing about Vince, he managed to put Reno in his place in five seconds flat, once he noticed the redhead was complaining. 

"This stupid pack is just too heavy, yo." 

"Is carrying it worse than fishing a swallowed key out of a dead informant's intestines?" 

". . . No. Did they actually make you do that?" 

"Yes. Now shut up." 

I could wish he'd used a different disgusting Turk thing as an example, though. I was sure there were plenty of them. 

The monsters in the cave were awful. I mean, like, _really_ awful. Dragons. Mutated tonberries. Suicide-bomber things. Malboros. Giant golems. And on and on. Seph sent the Seconds up against them in groups when he could, or had Vincent take them down with his hand-cannon—often, one well-placed shot was enough—but sometimes he and Genesis had to step in. And I was stuck in the back and couldn't do anything to help! Sure, a couple of times things came at us from behind, and I had to help the Seconds get those, but there weren't _nearly_ as many, and Seph had to be wearing himself out even with everyone else helping. 

A couple more hours, and he called a halt for supper. Rat bars, yum. Even I knew not to complain about them this time, though. And I was finally free of my rear-guard duties for a bit—Genesis got perimeter guard duty with some Seconds, because he was still on probation and Seph was going to be riding him ragged for a good long while yet—and could go over and sit with my girlfriend. And Cloud and Nanaki and the cat-on-a-moogle thing that she seemed to have taken to. 

"Are we going to camp here?" Nanaki was the first to speak up. 

I shook my head. "I bet Seph has us keep on going for a couple more hours, or until we find some evidence that Hojo and the AVALANCHE people are down here that goes beyond Genesis' say-so. It kind of bothers me that we _all_ came, y'know? Every single First Class. All but one of the senior Turks. Most of the Second Classes too. If something goes wrong on the outside, there won't be anything we can do." 

"Do you think Rhapsodos is lying?" Nanaki asked. 

I shrugged. "He's probably telling what he thinks is the truth, but that doesn't mean it _is_ the truth. Or the Planet could have another hissy fit and drop a malboro right in the middle of Midgar, and we might never know until we got back to the surface." 

"Ah, laddie, that's why I'm here!" The cat-on-a-moogle thing waved its hands. "I've a direct line right back to Midgar, so I do!" 

Well, that explained why Sephiroth had let Reeve send the thing along. 

"Don't believe we've been properly introduced," the cat-thing added. "I'm Cait Sith—pleased to meet you!" 

"Zack Fair," I said. "But if you have a direct line to Reeve, then you already know that." 

"Not exactly, lad. I'm an AI—an autonomous artificial intelligence. Reeve isn't watching through me all the time, and he's not usually telling me what to do, either. I figure that out for myself." 

"Can you fight?" That was the main thing on my mind right now, with respect to everyone here. 

Cait Sith chuckled. "Of course I can, laddie, or I'd never have been mad enough to come along. No matter what Reeve said." 

A robot cat with a self-preservation instinct made me think of bad sci-fi thrillers, but whatever. Sephiroth wouldn't have let the thing come along if he'd been worried, and he was a lot smarter than I was. 

"Cait Sith can probably fight better than I can." Cloud's voice wasn't even a whisper, not quite, and I was willing to bet that no one else had heard him. I reached over and ruffled his hair, trying to reassure him. 

"Seph wouldn't have let anyone who couldn't fight tag along," I said. Even Aerith—I'd given her my best materia last night, as Cloud suggested. Mastered Contain, mastered Shield, and mastered MP Absorb (not that I even knew why I had that one). I'd offered her my Hell Thundaga, too, but Aerith had refused it, saying it felt wrong. She never had liked the flaky marbles. So I'd equipped that one myself, along with Aerial Drain, Assault Twister, and a couple of other old favourites. Speaking of which . . . "Hey, Spiky, you got any empty materia slots?" 

"Three," Cloud admitted. "All I've got are the ones I picked up before we went Hedgehog Pie hunting that time, plus a Summon I found in Nibelheim, and Echo has more slots than my old sword." 

Oh, so _that_ was where he'd gotten that nasty little red orb. "Okay, let's see . . ." I rummaged through my pockets. I wasn't Seph, so I didn't have loads of exotic materia on me, but I did have a few more useful ones than I had slots. "Here you go—Counter Attack, All, and Speed Plus. They're all pretty much brand new, but they should help a little." 

"Are you sure? Thanks, Zack!" Cloud began swapping materia around. Hopefully it would help him a bit, or at least take his mind off things. 

I glanced over to where Seph was sitting, saw him shoulder to shoulder with Vincent, and felt myself smile a bit. Good. I couldn't look after him right now—the kids needed me too much—but he wasn't alone, either. Although I wasn't sure quite what the relationship between the two of them was now. Seph had claimed they weren't involved, but I was pretty sure the glances being passed back and forth between them weren't the kind I'd exchange with, say, Cloud or Reno. But they weren't the kind I'd share with Aerith, either. 

Maybe they were having as hard a time figuring it out as I was. I still wished them the best, stubborn, stoic, crazy bastards that they were. Seph, especially, deserved happiness after the hellish life he'd had so far. 

Over the next couple of hours, we followed Genesis deeper and deeper into the caves, and by the time we bedded down for the night, it was warm enough that we didn't need our winter gear anymore. We were getting near to the center of the Planet, near to the Lifestream. 

I just wished that made me feel better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, we've had cameos from all the original PCs except Barrett, whom I wasn't able to squeeze into this. He had to wait for one of the side/sequel things.


	65. Chapter 65

**Rufus**

"Wake up, you worthless brat!" 

My reflexes weren't good enough to avoid Hojo's lashing tentacles while I was still mostly asleep, but I did manage to kick him in the stomach in retaliation while I still looked enough out of it to get away with that. 

"Enough," Elfe said from behind the mutated scientist, but her voice sounded weak. She'd been slowly fading ever since we'd left Wutai . . . and sure enough, when I looked, she had an arm over Shears' shoulders. Besides, while the other AVALANCHE members might give lip service to the idea of her being in charge, everyone but Shears knew the real power in the organization lay with Fuhito. Elfe was just a figurehead, someone who could draw Shinra's attention and do the people-management jobs that the scientist hated. 

They needed to get that broken materia shard out of her if they wanted her to live. Immortal seeds weren't like normal materia, and this one was trying to use her energy to regenerate itself. But whoever was inside the thing was powerful, and without the missing pieces of the crystal, one human's energy wasn't going to be enough. I'd even considered telling Shears that, but I hadn't been able to see anything useful that initiating a power struggle here could get me. If we were going to fight Chaos and the green-eyed monster, better that we stand united. 

I sat up, dragged my hands through my hair, and adjusted my collar, trying to act as though I fell asleep on a cot in a public room with all my clothes on every day. "What do you want?" I asked, trying for a neutral tone, although the words themselves weren't neutral. 

"It's time, what else?" Hojo said, with a scowl. Or at least I thought it was a scowl. He looked so unhuman these days, with blue-grey skin, an oversized lower jaw, and tentacles mixed with hair that had gone completely white, that it was difficult to tell. 

_Time,_ my scrambled brain repeated. _Time for what?_ It took me a terrifying moment to figure it out. _Oh._

This was not going to be fun . . . but it was necessary. 

I rose to my feet and tugged my jacket straight. "Fine. Lead on." 

We made a little parade out of it. I even saw the girl Tifa fall in silently at the end of the group, behind Elfe and Shears. Well, let her. There was a limit to how much damage she'd be able to do with those fighting gloves no matter how experienced she was, and I couldn't blame her for being curious. 

This time, I had the brains to start the mental exercises before we passed through the last door and found ourselves in front of the mako waterfall again. And my barriers held, just barely. I could hear the Lifestream's chatter, but it wasn't so loud it was swamping my own thoughts. Just as well, since our little walk ended on a platform with a good view of the cataract. 

"Strip, brat. We can't hook you up to the sensors with that shirt on." 

I itched with the desire to give Hojo another kick. Preferably to the crotch, although I couldn't be sure he still kept his balls there. If he had any. How dare he treat me this way?! I wasn't that damned green-eyed lab specimen of his! I was Rufus Shinra, and I was Shenlong, and both of me deserved some respect. 

And so I kept my hands at my sides. "You might want to remember, Dr. Hojo, that this is going nowhere without my _voluntary cooperation_. Speak to me in that tone again, and I will reduce you to a handful of ash." Along with everyone else here, quite possibly including myself—if Merton had been an easy spell to target, it wouldn't have been so obscure, but I couldn't risk using anything weaker. Letting even one of Hojo's cells loose in the Lifestream might be . . . problematic. Rotting the Planet out from within wasn't what I wanted. Either of me. 

Hojo drew in a breath . . . and Shears kicked him in the shin. Hard. "Shut up." 

Hojo didn't, but he went from mouthing off at me to complaining about boors like Shears who didn't understand the sacrifices needed for science, which suited me just fine. 

Meanwhile, Fuhito offered me an elegant little bow. "Sir, would you please remove your shirt? I apologize for the rush, but our scouts indicate that Chaos and its friends are already on the way down here. We have very little time." 

I didn't like the smirk on the AVALANCHE scientist's face either, but I gritted my teeth and took my jacket off, folding it over the back of a convenient chair. Then I reached up and started unbuttoning my shirt. Tifa, I noted out of the corner of my eye, was watching again, staring at the surgical scar down my chest from the implantation of Shenlong's materia. A similar injury would heal scarlessly (and probably with some of the surgical tools still stuck inside me) if I were to receive it now, but at the time, my body had been fighting to adapt. 

Or maybe she wasn't staring at the scars. Maybe she was wondering where I was hiding my weapons. Most real Turks wore knives or small throwing weapons in an arm harness, and a materia wristlet of some kind. But then, I didn't need materia. 

I suffered through the indignity of having sensors stuck to me, some of them slimy with gel. At least they didn't ask me to drop my pants. 

"In there, please," Fuhito said, pointing. A tube. Well, of course, a tube. I kept my face expressionless as I stepped up onto the base and AVALANCHE's head scientist slid needles into my veins and a mask over my face. Then the tube itself slowly rose from the floor, closing me in. Fuhito began speaking into a recorder. "Ready to commence experiment 14-A-3, on enhancing the powers of an Immortalis. The subject is the midranked wind-type, Shenlong, as detailed in appendix. Filling the tank with supportive fluid now." 

_Supportive fluid my ass,_ I thought. It was pure mako straight from the Lifestream, a tiny branch of it diverted so that it flowed gently down into the tube, then back out through a floor drain to rejoin the rest of the torrent. And with it flooding over my skin, I could no longer block out the voices. 

« _no, no, no, no, no_ » 

« _Omega's squire to the lofty heavens_ » 

« _Jenova's heir is not Jenova_ » 

« _he carries her bonded weapon; they are the same_ » 

« _if he is, what of it? What right had we to deny her?_ » 

Damnable squabbling fools! Couldn't they all just shut up? 

There was something painfully hot entering my left arm through one of the needles Fuhito had inserted, and something equally painfully cold coming in through the other one on the right. That was According To Plan, if I remembered correctly. One of those was concentrated mako, far thicker than the natural stuff of the Lifestream. The other was . . . was . . . damnit, I couldn't remember through all this babble! But the combination of the two was supposed to stimulate the materia implanted in my torso. 

When they both reached the center, it felt like a whirlwind was shredding my insides, piece by tiny piece. That didn't seem so odd—there was a lot of force concentrated in me right now. Pain, ultimately, wasn't important. I'd learned that at my father's knee/by Jenova's side . . . I . . . Great Gaia, what was happening? Phantoms waltzing back and forth in front of me—Susano-o in Tseng's blue suit, a creature with my father's face and Jenova's body and silver hair—thoughts sliding and scrambling, and my head felt like it was going to split. 

And then it did, after a fashion. I screamed as I lost control and my body partially metamorphosed. My own flesh pushed the mask off my face and left me breathing mako as I screamed again and something inside my chest cracked and my consciousness fell away into endless green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rufus just can't catch a break. And neither can I right now. Damned migraines . . .


	66. Chapter 66

**Vincent**

When I woke up, I discovered I'd rolled over onto my side and pressed my face into Sephiroth's hair, where it lay in a thick braid outside his sleeping bag. I pulled away immediately—not because I wanted to, but because we were in the middle of a mission and it was inappropriate. He would have agreed with that, I knew, if he'd been awake. 

I sat up, finger-combed my own hair, and re-tied it. It didn't matter how it looked so long as it stayed out of the way. The only person here who was likely to care about someone else's grooming was Genesis, and I cared about his opinion of me only to the extent necessary to avoid making things more difficult between him and Sephiroth as they worked on re-establishing the trust and friendship that had once linked them. 

The air of the caverns smelled of mako and sulphur, and I wrinkled my nose as I slid out of the sleeping bag and reached for my boots. We were getting closer to the center of the Planet here. 

«Smells like home,» Chaos said inside me. 

"Go back to sleep," I whispered. Boots laced, I secured Cerberus' holster to my thigh and slid my guns into their places, then began to roll up my bedding. No one else was stirring yet, but I knew I wouldn't be getting any more sleep. I didn't need as much as I once had, and there was a restless energy prickling at my nerves. Perhaps it was because of the closeness of the Lifestream, and the mako saturating the air. I could feel my co-walkers shifting inside me, the Galian Beast scenting the air through me while Hellmasker giggled. 

What would happen if they all managed to get loose at once? It was an unpleasant thought that hadn't crossed my mind before. I frowned and tried to push it away. 

My nostrils flared as I caught a whiff of coffee through the mako-sulphur, and I followed my nose over to an alcove in the side of the large cavern we'd chosen as our home for the night. 

I recognized Veld instantly, of course. He was heating the coffee over a small camp stove while staring at something held in the palm of his hand. I managed to catch a glimpse of a photo of a little girl before he noticed I was there, and turned his head to look up at me. 

"Vincent. Sit down." He nodded toward a rock beside the one he was perched on. 

As I sat, I tilted my head in the direction of the now-hidden photograph and raised an eyebrow, knowing that he would understand the question. 

"My daughter, Felicia," he explained. "I was told she had died in Kalm." 

I caught the wording and gave him a quick look. Another question. 

"I managed to get a few strands of hair from the body they were going to bury as hers, and had an independent genetics lab run a paternity test. It wasn't her. I never told anyone that I knew." He sighed. "I assumed it had just been an error—that her body had been completely destroyed and they'd produced a substitute in the hope that it would help shore me up, psychologically. Old Shinra always did hate losing a valuable asset. And then, three years later, _this_ turns up on my desk." 

It was another photograph. A girl, or a young woman, with short, dark hair and tired eyes. Veld laid the first photo down beside it, and I made the obvious comparison. The hair colour was the same. Skin tone, eyes, facial structure . . . all matches. And . . . 

"She looks like Paula," I observed. I hadn't known Veld's wife well, but I remembered that much. "Except with your hair." Veld had darkened a bit in the intervening years, but his hair had had that same reddish tone to it when we were young men. 

"It isn't just a coincidence, either," Veld said. "That's a still taken from footage of Elfe, the AVALANCHE leader. She appears spontaneously a few years after Kalm was bombed. No history before that, and believe me, we've looked. We _do_ know she has amnesia. I've been trying to secure some kind of sample for another paternity test, but I've had no luck so far." 

"And now she's down there," I finished, nodding toward an exit on the far side of the cavern. 

"And now she's down here," he agreed. 

I laid my good hand on top of his. "Worst case, I'll make sure you aren't the one who has to shoot her," I promised, and he nodded. It was a Turk's promise, rooted in the grim reality we'd both lived, and we both understood what it meant. 

He poured me a cup of coffee, and we sat there in silence, drinking, as the camp began to wake up around us. Reno tottered over at one point with his eyes mostly shut, and Veld shook his head and put a full mug in the younger Turk's hand. Reno drank, cursed as he burned his tongue, and wandered away again. 

"I've never met anyone who was less of a morning person," my ex-partner said as he watched the younger Turk's retreating back. Then, "Vince, I've been meaning to ask . . . Are you and Sephiroth . . . ?" 

_Lovers_ , he meant. I shrugged. "It's complicated, and I'm afraid putting a label on it might make it fall apart." Did an unreciprocated hand-job count as "making love"? I suspected it was one of those things that depended on both the backgrounds of the participants, and their reasons for being involved in such an act. Sephiroth had gotten _something_ out of it, I was sure, but what _kind_ of "something" it had been was another question. 

"It's always complicated," Veld said quietly. "Good luck," he added, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. "You're going to need it, if that's what you're going after." 

I gave him a grunt that was really neither affirmation nor negation. 

We crossed into a section of cave that showed signs of human traffic other than ourselves around mid-morning, I suspect more by accident than due to Genesis having any idea where he was going. He _had_ admitted he had never been to this base, only seen a rough sketch-map of part of the caverns, so that was unsurprising. Someone had definitely been through here, though—you didn't need any tracking skills to see the footprints. There was no telling how long they'd been here, given the lack of air movement, but the clearest impressions indicated shoes or boots of fairly modern construction. 

Regardless, the footprints were our best bet, so we decided to follow them. They led into a loose downward spiral of tunnels . . . or at least, I thought that was what we were dealing with. Several of the Second Classes cursed when they discovered that the caverns' internal geometry was overloading the mapping function on their PHSs. 

My training predated the existence of PHSs with mapping software, so I'd been taking mental notes instead, looking around to make sure I understood the layout. Sephiroth seemed to be doing the same, building up an image of the caverns in his head. And Veld, whose training paralleled mine, although I expected he was a bit rusty—the Head Turk spends most of his time in an office, not in the field. 

We all noticed the first anomaly at about the same time, though—I could tell from their line of sight. A tunnel mouth blocked with loose stone, recently deposited. Veld stilled just a hair, and the corner of Sephiroth's mouth turned down. They were probably thinking the same things I was: _Closed off intentionally. To prevent their own people from wandering, or is this a trap?_

Even if this path was a trap, we had only limited options, though. We could walk into it cautiously, or turn aside and risk getting lost in the caverns for who-knew-how-long. Under those circumstances, better to go with the trap. And expect opposition. 

This couldn't be AVALANCHE's main route into whatever base they had here, though. If they'd taken the time to close off the side passages, surely they would have provided lighting. And signage. 

Sephiroth suddenly held up his hand, and we all stopped dead in our tracks. He gestured to me—handsigns for _unknown_ , _ahead_ , and _scout_. I nodded and beckoned to Veld, who gave me a crooked grin. Once more I was certain we were thinking the same thing: _Just like old times._

We ghosted silently down the sandy tunnel, guns at ready. I had to get a good twenty feet from the others before I was able to detect anything up ahead—faint light from around a corner, footsteps, and the smell of humans and metal and something animal and rank. I didn't know how Sephiroth had been able to detect any of it from so far back. 

We didn't go around the corner. Instead, we stopped for a moment and listened. Humans, breathing. Footsteps, always in groups and never alone. No conversation, no rustles of fabric from casual movement. It was disturbing. Even infantry standing at attention shifted their weight now and again, or made a movement out of sync. Veld was frowning, so he had to have noticed too. He went down on one knee and took out a small mirror with a telescoping handle, which he slowly slid out for a look—putting it well below eye level reduced the chance of someone noticing it. 

I crouched beside him so that I could see. Legs, black-clad and booted. Not SOLDIER boots, although the trousers seemed to be of similar cut. There were a lot of them, and they seemed to be holding staves or polearms. 

Veld angled the mirror up. The black-clad men were wearing helmets that hid their faces, and in the back, I could see some kind of large, dark-skinned monster . . . wearing old-fashioned Wutainese armour and with a paper talisman pasted to its forehead. It also had a very large axe propped against one shoulder. I wasn't sure what _that_ was about, but from Veld's expression, he knew. 

We wiggled the mirror a little more, but all we saw was more black-clad men and more armoured monsters. The polearms the men were holding turned out to be scythes, which looked impressive but were terrible weapons—one Turk who had been in training at the same time as Veld and I had been determined to use them as a primary weapon, and it took months of being half-killed in sparring matches to get him to switch to the falx, which, if not a very Turk-like weapon, was at least workable _as_ a weapon. I shook my head slightly as Veld pulled the mirror back, and we retreated just as silently as we'd come. 

"Ravens," Veld told Sephiroth as soon as we were close enough to do it quietly. "Minimum of twenty, maybe more. And at least three vajradhara, although where they got those . . ." 

"We never did figure out who developed them," Sephiroth murmured. "I take it there's a large cavern—vajradhara don't do well in confined spaces." 

"Hard to tell exactly how large," I agreed. "But no, they won't be coming at us single-file." 

"I suppose we get the vijjies," Genesis said. "Joy." 

"Vajradhara were used by Wutai during the war to take down SOLDIERs," Sephiroth explained—he must have noticed my look of confusion. "They are quite capable of taking on a Second Class. Despite appearances, their armour is bulletproof." 

"You want me to trade with Zack," I said before he needed to. 

Sephiroth nodded. "If anything happens, just concentrate on backing them up—Captain Kunsel will command the Seconds." 

"Understood." 

Zack didn't seem very surprised when I brought him the news. He flashed me a grin, clapped the Second Class he'd introduced as Kunsel on the shoulder, and headed forward. 

I drifted off to one side, hugging the shadows of the wall, as we began to move forward again. Whether or not there would be anything dangerous coming from behind depended on how overconfident AVALANCHE was. They might think that they could take the most powerful individuals in Shinra's army without using much in the way of strategy. Or they might play it safe. Fuhito's Turk file indicated that he was an adequate tactician when he could be bothered to look up from his test tubes. 

Ahead, the vanguard worked their way past the bend, and I began hearing the first sounds of battle—gunshots, metal striking metal, SOLDIER battle cries, and the roar of a monster. Veld was standing in the middle of the tunnel, making a barrier of himself so that the medical team didn't wander into the live fire zone. I deliberately turned my back and stared into the dark of the passageway leading back to the surface. 

Had that been just the least sound of movement, a scrape of someone's foot against stone? _Getting paranoid in my old age . . ._ Still, I pulled Cerberus from his holster and pointed him out into the dark. 

. . . That was definitely the sound of _something_ moving not too far away, and I didn't think it was coming from behind me. A monster, perhaps. I just hoped it wasn't another one of those wretched tonberries. _There_ was a species I think everyone in our party would have liked to see extinct. 

Kunsel and his men had also noticed that there was something off here, from the way they were readying weapons and glaring into the dark. 

Something metallic bounced along the floor towards me. I kicked it back in the direction it had come without even getting a good look at it. I wasn't surprised when it exploded, but I wasn't prepared for the flash, either. It left me cursing and trying to shield streaming eyes. 

I didn't see the incoming fist so much as feel it, and I ducked and threw myself to the right, away from the wall. I didn't dare shoot until I knew who I was shooting _at_. My sight was returning rapidly, but for the moment, I could only see wavering silhouettes. That was enough for me to bring Cerberus down to smash the attacker's knuckles as he made another strike, but not to take irreversible action unless it was to prevent some _other_ irreversible action. 

Still, I couldn't stay completely on the defensive. I drove a kick into the blurry shadow's knee. The sabaton glanced off, scraping along the patella, but I heard a man's voice curse. I was getting bits of colour now . . . that had to be some kind of hat, not his hair. Unless it was a terrible dye job. 

We both jumped back at the same moment, disengaging, and I spared a second to swipe the back of my left hand across my eyes, hoping the tough fabric of my glove would absorb some of the moisture blurring my sight. It did help a little. 

"Shears," I identified the man in front of me out loud, who sneered at me. He looked exactly like the photo in his Turk file, right down to the ragged bandana covering most of his hair. Kunsel and his Second Classes were all working together to fight a short-haired woman with a sword in her hand: Elfe. Or Felicia. The Seconds weren't making much progress. But I couldn't think of a way to take her down without killing her while I still had Shears on my back. 

Well. There were ways to handle that. 

I brought Cerberus up in a blur and shot, but Shears swayed to the side so that the bullet only creased him instead of perforating his liver, and then moved forward to close again. And I couldn't back up—I'd have to engage him hand-to-hand again. Which was his specialty, not mine, and my enhancements weren't giving me enough of an edge. 

So I did the only thing I could think of. I ducked behind a Second Class, and used him as cover to shoot at Elfe. 

She cut the bullet from the air. I'd seen Sephiroth pull that trick, so I'd known it was possible, but it felt odd seeing it from Veld's daughter. Who, as far as anyone knew, wasn't enhanced. 

_This is bad._ The Second I'd ducked behind was holding his own against Shears, but Elfe struck one man's weapon from his hand and ran him through even as I watched. I wasn't suited to fighting in tight quarters with so many other people in the way of my gun. I couldn't open up any distance, probably wouldn't be able to land a shot on Elfe even if I did, and I couldn't leave the Seconds to fight alone, or they would lose. That left . . . I grimaced, but there was no way around it. 

I dodged past the Seconds and threw myself onto the point of Elfe's sword. 

At first I felt only heat. The blade ran all the way through my torso, point emerging from the other side, before the pain hit and the crackle of power began to build under my skin. 

"Handle Shears," I told Kunsel, trying to catch his eyes through the surface of his helmet. "I'll deal with Elfe." 

And then the Gallian Beast erupted and reduced me to a passive observer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So why are the Ravens suddenly wielding scythes? Um, because Fuhito thought it looked more impressive? (Okay, it's really because I was paying attention to the wrong thing in a screenshot, and there had been too long a gap between my writing this chapter and the ones set in Cosmo Canyon to remember every single detail. Sorry.)


	67. Chapter 67

**Cloud**

The Second Class who headed up the squad I'd been assigned to was named Luxiere. I actually knew him slightly, since he was a friend of Zack's. Then again, it sometimes seemed like everyone was a friend of Zack's. There weren't many people he didn't get along with. 

When the flash-bang went off behind us, I was facing in the other direction, so I wasn't blinded. Before turning around, I squinted my eyes almost shut to keep it that way, and then drew Echo. Behind me, beyond the bend in the tunnel, I could hear fighting, metal striking metal and spells being set off. But I was willing to bet there were enough Ravens and vaj-whatevers there to keep even General Sephiroth busy for a while. Until they were done in there, the rest of us were on our own. 

I was a little behind the other SOLDIERs, nearest the medics, right in front of Aerith. Nanaki nudged my hip as he moved to stand on my left side. Cait Sith positioned himself on my right. _Last line of defense,_ I thought grimly. Along with Aerith herself, and her materia. 

I relaxed a bit too soon when I realized there were only two attackers. Then I saw the way the woman was taking on the whole rear-guard while the man kept Vincent busy, and, well, it didn't look good. 

Somehow, I kept myself from freaking out when Vincent impaled himself on the woman's sword to trigger his Limit Break, and he turned into a baby behemoth. Several of the Seconds flinched back, though. 

"What," Luxiere asked no one in particular, "is that _thing_?" 

"It's called the Gallian Beast, I think," I said. "Soldier Valentine's Limit Break, or one of them. You might want to have everyone back off—he doesn't completely control them." 

"Great. Would have been nice if someone had warned us. _Kunsel!_ It's on our side, but don't get too close!" 

One of the other Seconds, indistinguishable in his helmet, waved acknowledgement. "Back off and give him room, everyone! He's big enough to block the tunnel without our help! Concentrate on Shears!" 

Shears went down less than thirty seconds later, under the sheer weight of numbers. I didn't even see who got his sword against his throat first. The AVALANCHE fighter raised his hands slowly, and Reno moved forward to cuff them behind him. Meanwhile, the Gallian Beast was blocking enough of the tunnel that we couldn't see what was going on with the woman. When Vincent's alter ego roared and began to sprint away from us, I figured she was probably . . . retreating urgently, like they said in all the tactics books General Sephiroth was making me read. 

"Strife, right?" 

I couldn't recognize the Second who had spoken to me through his helmet, but I could see his insignia, so . . . "Captain Kunsel?" 

"Got it in one. We're going after them and you're coming with us." 

"Yes, sir." What else could I say? Orders. Again. 

We trotted off into the tunnel, weapons at ready. I hoped I didn't trip—skewering myself on my own sword would be really embarrassing. At least we didn't have to worry much about tracking. There was a trail of fresh blood leading the way. 

We found Galian snarling at a low opening in the tunnel wall. There was no way a behemoth, even a really small one, would have fit. The blood led inside, of course. 

Captain Kunsel gestured me forward. I wasn't sure quite what to do, but I went. 

"Vincent?" I said tentatively. 

Galian gave me a disgusted look, held it for a moment, then dipped down to sniff at me. It—he?—finished by giving me a head-butt. I think it was meant to be gentle, but it sent me staggering back a couple of steps. 

"I don't think you're going to fit in there," I said. Galian gave me another disgusted look, then got behind me and tried to push me into the opening. If I'd gotten down on my hands and knees, I probably could have made it, but I'd be a sitting duck when I got to the other end. "Look, I'm not strong enough to fight her, okay? Even if I caught up, I wouldn't be able to do much." I considered the opening again. Most of the other SOLDIERs were big guys. Vincent might have fit through if he'd been himself, since he was pretty skinny, but he'd have had to crawl on his elbows, and that was even worse for defense than hands and knees. That left . . . Aerith or . . . "Captain Kunsel, can you send someone back to get Nanaki? He's the only person I can think of who could get through here easily." 

"She'll be long gone by the time we're done with all the to-ing and fro-ing," Kunsel said, but he signaled one of the other Seconds and the man ran off. 

I shrugged. "Yeah, but I don't think this guy—" I nodded at Galian. "—is going to stand down and go back to being Vincent until someone _checks_." 

Kunsel sighed, but there wasn't much he could do about it either. Meanwhile, Galian sat down on the ground like a very large purple dog and continued to watch the opening as though he expected the woman from AVALANCHE to pop out. 

It took a couple of minutes for Nanaki to arrive, and he had to crouch and squeeze in a bit to fit into the blood-marked tunnel, but unlike the rest of us, he was built for it. 

"It opens into a sandy cave, about five by eight by four feet," he said once he neared the end. And, a moment later. "She's here. Out cold. And I'm no judge of illness in humans, but to my eye, she looks terrible—worse than I would expect just due to her having a bite mark on her calf." 

Galian suddenly folded in on himself, shrinking and rippling and darkening until Vincent sat there instead. We all stared as the ex-Turk picked himself up, checked his gun with a quick touch, and dusted himself off. 

"Do you think you can get her back through to this side?" Vincent asked as soon as he was sure he was still armed, and how did that work, anyway? 

"It's going to be awkward, but I think so." 

It took him a while. Nanaki had to literally drag the unconscious woman by the collar as he worked his way backward towards the main tunnel. He had to stop every couple of feet and let go to make sure that both of them could breathe, muttering what I was sure were curses in some language used only by firelions. But eventually, he did get her to our end of the crawlspace, and I pulled her out into the main tunnel. 

He'd been right: she did look awful, and it wasn't just because of the way her clothes were slowly being dyed red just below the knee. She was almost as light-skinned as me, but when I took off my glove and pressed my fingers against her neck to check her pulse, she was several shades too yellow. And her face was sunken—not horribly, but there were hollows under her cheekbones. She didn't look like she was eating well. 

"I left her sword behind on the far side," Nanaki offered as Vincent cuffed the unconscious woman's hands (he'd probably gotten the handcuffs from the Turks, but again, where had Galian been hiding them?) and cast a Cure spell at her. It wasn't enough to wake her up, although she did moan and twitch a bit. 

"Let's get back," Kunsel said. Vincent picked up the unconscious woman, and I fell in beside him. 

"What do you think's wrong with her?" I asked as we walked. 

Vincent shrugged. "I have no idea, and her file isn't that complete, despite Veld's efforts. She was one of the survivors of the firebombing of Kalm some years ago, and there may have been lasting damage." 

I looked her over again. No burn scars that I could see, but . . . "What's wrong with her hand? There's a lump that I can see right through the glove." 

"That's odd. Can you get the glove off without taking the cuffs off too?" 

"I think so." It took a little work to get the edge of the cloth out from under the metal, but I managed. The AVALANCHE woman's hand, revealed, had part of a dark red materia stuck into its back, and the skin around the crystal was inflamed. "Not good," I said quietly. 

Vincent's eyes narrowed. "Very," he said. "If Chaos is telling me the truth this time, she should be dead—I can't tell who that materia is, but it's drawing on her life force to try to rebuild itself. It would explain why she collapsed." 

I winced. It couldn't be safe to take it out, or someone had already done it. "Do you think the medics can do anything for her?" 

"I don't know. Veld will probably make them try, though." 

I blinked. "He wants to question her that badly?" 

"She's his daughter. Probably." 

_Oookay._ "How did she end up with AVALANCHE?" 

"Unknown. It's been a good five years since he last saw her." He glanced down and added, "She's only about your age, you know." 

She looked older, but it was probably because of the way the materia was draining her. 

We walked in silence after that, because I wasn't quite sure what to say. Veld's daughter, or whatever she was, was still unconscious when we caught up with the medics again. 

"Good job, Strife," Kunsel said. 

"Thank you, sir. Permission to return to my post?" 

"Granted. And, Strife?" 

"Yes, sir?" 

"Stop acting like a trooper. SOLDIER isn't that rigid—and anyway, everyone's already making bets on how long it takes you to end up with my job." 

"I'm not—" 

A soft snort came from behind the helmet. "You're the _General's_ protege. There would be something wrong if you _weren't_ being groomed as an officer. Do you really think they make every Third read two-inch-thick tactics manuals? Unless you get trampled by a grand horn or something, you're going to end up as Major Strife, if not Colonel Strife or even General Strife." 

"SOLDIER only has one General." SOLDIER had only ever had one General. 

"Who's in the field all the time," Kunsel pointed out. "It only takes one accident before they have to look for a successor." 

I gritted my teeth, because I knew he was right. But at the same time, Sephiroth was so much a force of nature that it was difficult to imagine he wouldn't live forever. "I'm going back to my post now. Sir." 

Luxiere glanced at me as I returned to my spot right by the medical team. It was hard to tell through the helmet, but I thought his expression might have been sympathetic. 

The head medic was examining the woman from AVALANCHE. Veld was leaning over her from the other side. He had no expression on his face, but then Turks were good at that. And Sephiroth, Zack, and Genesis had all come back around the corner. None of them appeared to be hurt, but Zack had a splash of blood on his face, smeared like he'd tried to wipe it off. Vincent had drifted over to stand beside Sephiroth, and was speaking quietly to him, while the General frowned at Veld's daughter with the kind of grim seriousness that he reserved for the worst problems that crossed his desk. 

"Do we know which materia it is?" he asked after Vincent fell silent. 

"Even I wasn't able to figure that out," Colonel Rhapsodos said. "I tried to greet it at one point, but it didn't react. I doubt whoever is inside has enough strength to rise to consciousness with the materia in that state." 

"We never even knew about it," Reno added. "But I bet it's a strong one, yo. I mean, just look at it." 

I looked at it again, but the only thing I could see that was unusual about the materia in Veld's daughter's hand was how dark a red it was. Did the colour of Summon materia matter? Magic ones tended to be lighter if they had mostly healing spells inside and darker if they were mostly attack, but I'd only seen maybe half a dozen Summons in my entire life, including the one slotted into my sword hilt right now, so I had no idea if subtle variations in colour meant anything there. 

"Ugh! Elfe! Damn you bastards!" Shears came . . . hopping over, pretty much, with Rude escorting him. They'd used two pairs of cuffs on the man from AVALANCHE, binding each of his wrists to the opposite ankle. It couldn't be easy walking like that, especially since the chains weren't all that long. He had to hunch over just to stand. "What did you do to her?!" 

"Nothing. She collapsed, and we found her and brought her back here." Veld still somehow managed to look calm, unlike Shears. I didn't understand how he was doing it. "I should be the one asking _you_ that question: what in hell have you AVALANCHE bastards done to my little girl?!" He managed to sound menacing without ever raising his voice. 

" _Your_ little . . . Holy shit." Shears was looking quickly back and forth between Veld and Elfe, if that was her name. " _You're_ the one she screams for in her sleep? A _Turk_?" 

"It's true that we mostly don't have family," Veld admitted. "After what happened at Kalm, I understand why all too well. But yes, your Elfe is my daughter Felicia." 

"And you just left her with us." Shears sneered. "Some dad you are." 

Veld glared at him. "It took me two years just to—" 

"Veld," Vincent interrupted. 

The Head Turk glanced at his former partner, then looked back as Shears. "I don't owe you any explanations, but you'd be well-advised to give us some. Where is Rufus Shinra?" 

Shears snorted. "For all I know, he's on his way to Costa del Sol by now." 

Veld put his hand on Shears shoulder, and dug his fingers in. The AVALANCHE fighter screamed, and I winced, suddenly wishing to be anywhere but here. 

"Shit, that hurts! How in hell did you—aagh!" 

"Just making sure that you're paying attention," the Head Turk said. "That was a pressure point. I know where to find a few more. And also . . ." He leaned forward and whispered something in Shears' ear, and I was glad I wasn't enhanced enough to be able to hear more than a few disconnected syllables. 

Shears' eyes widened. "You wouldn't." 

"Oh, I would. Especially since it would have the useful side effect of keeping you from getting frisky with my daughter. Or we could deal with that in a more permanent way. After all, we don't have any use for birds that won't sing." 

Shears shrugged. "I never figured I was going to live all that long, anyway . . . but I need to stay alive to protect her from you bastards. Daddy or no daddy." 

"So you might wanna start talking right about now, yo," Reno put in helpfully. "Rufus, if you need a refresher as to what we were discussing before that little side-trip." 

"The last time I saw him, he was at our outpost here." Shears sagged a bit as he spoke. 

"He's alive, then." Tseng said it as though it couldn't possibly be otherwise. 

"Barely." Shears went quiet for a moment after that, but Veld gave him a look, and he squirmed a bit before giving up and continuing. "Fuhito and Hojo were doing some kind of experiment, and it went wrong. Rufus kinda . . . collapsed. Last I saw, he was still breathing, though." 

Tseng had gone really still about midway through that. It made me wonder if the stories about him and Rufus being lovers were really true. I mean, you hear all kinds of stuff when you're living in the barracks, and all kinds of _other_ stuff when you're hanging around Shinra Tower, and that was one of those rumours that just would not die. Then again, the ones about Sephiroth and Scarlet wouldn't die either, and I knew _those_ weren't true. Scarlet probably spread them in her spare time to keep them from petering out. 

"Can you take us there?" Sephiroth asked. 

Shears was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Elfe. Then back up at Sephiroth. " . . . Yeah. But I don't know where all the booby traps are, and you don't have the tokens to deactivate them." 

"Do the Ravens have tokens?" the General asked.


	68. Chapter 68

**Sephiroth**

Thirty Raven corpses yielded enough intact AVALANCHE "tokens", in the form of unsophisticated miniature transmitters, for a bit more than half of our party. We made do, stopping at what the Turks thought were trap-free portions of the tunnel and relaying tokens back for the people waiting in the previous safe zone. Spiralling deeper into the earth in a nerve-wracking game of leapfrog. There was so much stone above our heads now that I could almost feel its weight. 

It was past mid-morning and the march was beginning to tell on the unenhanced members of our party—the Turks and the medics. And that was before Vincent, after we entered what we had thought was a safe zone, tossed his token to Veld and immediately triggered a small explosion. No one, including Vincent, was hurt, but I think it sapped the Turks' confidence a bit, since they felt they should have detected the bomb. 

It also made the fine hairs at the back of my neck hackle when Vincent did the same thing at the next stop, being the first to take his token off so that it could be passed back. He had volunteered to be our equivalent of a mine canary because it was unlikely that mere explosives could do more than make him turn into the Galian Beast for a bit, but I still wished I had been able to forbid him to make that choice, because of the chaos that seeing him in danger created inside me. 

I wondered sometimes if I was overcorrecting, if it would perhaps be better to show, at least to Vincent himself, some of the turmoil inside me. But I had spent my entire life having to be so _careful_ of emotions, and we were in the middle of a mission . . . It just wasn't appropriate. Afterwards, perhaps, I would talk to him. When Hojo was dead and AVALANCHE was dealt with and Rufus Shinra's fate had been determined. 

I gritted my teeth and shut those thoughts away. A great deal needed to happen between now and the end of the mission, and I needed to plan, and consider what we'd found out so far. 

For instance, the vajradhara. I hadn't seen any of those since Wutai, and while they weren't dangerous to a First Class, I couldn't help wondering how AVALANCHE had acquired them, and whether they had any more. Even Wutai had never had many, and we'd destroyed all the ones we'd found. Had AVALANCHE scooped up a few we had missed, or did they know how to manufacture more? That was . . . disquieting, since there was no telling who else they might have passed it on to by now. The Planet's attempts to defend Her honour with out-of-place monsters were bad enough. If Wutai's anti-SOLDIER monsters started cropping up on a regular basis, I wasn't going to be able to send out Thirds on missions alone or in pairs. The minimum deployment during the war had been an entire squad. 

And there was another question that was nagging at me: why had Hojo or whoever was in charge of this mess right now sent out Elfe and Shears so early in the game? It seemed wasteful to discard two strong pieces so early. They couldn't have bet everything on one throw. Fuhito of AVALANCHE wasn't a brilliant tactician, but he wasn't completely stupid, either. He wouldn't have allowed this to happen unless there was more and worse waiting for us at the end of this tunnel . . . or they were stalling for time. What could they have been hoping to get done? I doubted it was anything as benign as patching up Rufus so that they could use him as a hostage. Conclusion: if there wasn't something much worse than Elfe and Shears already waiting for us at the AVALANCHE outpost down below, that was only because Hojo needed a little longer to finish cooking it up. 

The scent of mako in the air was getting thicker as we headed downwards. It reminded me of the labs, making my stomach roil, but I gave no outward sign. Was that light up ahead? Green light. Precisely the unfortunate colour of my eyes, of the Planet's lifeblood. 

One more turn of the narrow way, and we emerged onto a ledge with a wall of green in front of us, falling vertically from somewhere high above. Fortunately, it threw no spray that I could detect, leaving the ledge dry. 

It was weirdly fascinating. _Conquer the world,_ Jenova had whispered to me. _Conquer the Lifestream._ But how did one conquer this? How did one even _fight_ it? Millions of tons of liquid mako, surging along the channels under the skin of the world in a neverending stream, playing host to every soul in the world that wasn't currently incarnate. Attacking _that_ was such foolishness I didn't know why I had ever considered it, even for a moment. 

"Ugh, I'm starting to wonder if they ever shut up," Genesis said as he emerged from the tunnel onto the ledge. "Much more of this, and I will be quite a bit madder than I was after the degradation reached my brain. And you're giving me that look of yours, Seph. Can't you hear it? You should be able to." 

"All I hear is the makofall." And that was barely a sound. More of a vibration, bass thunder that shaded over into the infrasonic. 

Gen blinked. I had almost forgotten what surprise looked like on him. Then he sneered, although there was no malice in it, just irritation. "Always the lucky one. Either you have the strongest mental barriers that Susano-o has ever heard of, or someone who's only half an Immortalis can't hear the Lifestream. We're so close to it here that I can't keep it out, and it's as though a hundred people are shouting in my ears. Except that they apparently can't hear themselves or each other, and so make absolutely no sense." With a snort, he added, "It's odd to think that you're currently more human than me. Despite the eyes." 

"The General didn't choose to have those eyes." 

I blinked. I might have expected Zack to leap to my defense with words much like those, but Cloud? 

Genesis harrumphed. "I'm aware of that, Soldier." 

"I'm sorry if that was forward of me, sir." Cloud was looking at me and not Gen as he said that. 

"I think we can overlook it this once," I said, and saw a smile flicker across his face too quickly to be noticed by anyone but a SOLDIER. 

At some point, Cloud, too, had become precious to me. 

"Thank you sir. Captain Luxiere sent me forward to report that Aerith has fainted, sir. He suggested that we stop and rest for a bit, but if that's what caused it—" Cloud gestured at the falling mako. "—then maybe that isn't such a good idea." 

"She's a Cetra," Genesis said. "Of course she would hear it too." 

"She's only half," Cloud said. "Sir." 

"According to Hojo's notes, there is no such thing as a half-Cetra," I told him. "Either all of the abilities are inherited, or none of them are." I frowned, fingering the protomateria in my pocket. Being in too much of a hurry down here might be dangerous, but . . . "Veld," I said, turning to the Head Turk and his charge. "Get him to explain the next part of the route." 

"Right." Veld gave Shears a Look. "Now are you going to play nice, or do I need to gag you again?" 

AVALANCHE's chief thug, or whatever the proper title was, glared at the Turk, but he also said, "We go along the ledge for a bit, then there's another tunnel. Beyond that's the space we actually use. No more traps this far in, but they might've taken out the bridge after we left. Fuhito was talking about it when he wasn't blabbing about materia and messengers of the Planet." 

"We will continue as far as the other tunnel," I decided. "In the meanwhile, someone should cast an MBarrier on Miss Gainsborough." I had no idea whether it would help, but before Nibelheim, when Jenova's voice had only been the faintest of whispers for me, that spell had sometimes been able to shut her out. "Genesis, go and relieve Zack at the rear. I doubt he'll be able to focus under these circumstances." 

Genesis was busy casting an MBarrier of his own. After the spell settled around him, he blinked and nodded. "Interesting. It does help, a bit. Very well, I'll go pet the puppy for you." 

We moved cautiously forward along the ledge after that. I kept my gaze on the path ahead, while Vincent spent a lot of his time looking up the cliff and Veld stared down over the edge, guarding the other potential angles of attack. Although really, I didn't expect to see anything coming at us from those directions unless Hojo had concocted a behemoth with suckers for feet. Of course, knowing Hojo, that wasn't impossible. 

At one point, I saw a knob of rock sticking out of the makofall, and blinked as I realized it was shifting up and down slightly in the torrent. How did it stay in place if it was so poorly secured? Perhaps it was about to fall away into the depths. Or so I thought until we started seeing the other floating rocks. Most of them were small, gravel to fist-sized, not enough to walk on, but either they were violating the laws of physics, or there was a natural antigravity spell operating on them. 

I didn't like that. It meant that other aspects of the physical environment down here might also not follow the rules, and not knowing what to expect from the world around you was dangerous in a fight. 

The ledge remained bereft of obstacles, although here and there a bit of litter was caught among the rocks, proving that humans had passed through here recently. Truth be told, I would have preferred to run into another flock of Ravens. Being allowed to proceed in peace implied that Hojo and his supporters had no further need to delay us. 

We might already be too late to stop them. 

That cheerful thought was still resounding in my head when we arrived at the tunnel entrance. The new path was lit with far more than mako, and my pupils contracted sharply as I stepped into the white light, altering my peripheral vision. In an ideal world, I would have stopped for half a second to allow myself to adjust, but I couldn't afford to do that here. As a result, I almost missed the laser crossing the path at knee height. 

Two steps back, and I had Shears by the collar. "I thought you said there would be no more traps from this point on," I said. "So why is there a trigger crossing the path eighteen inches off the ground?" 

"News to— Oh. Wait. Yeah, I forgot about that because it really isn't a trap, just a doorbell. I doubt there's anyone even monitoring it. There'd have to be someone _left_ for that." 

Veld stepped around us for a look. "So do we announce ourselves, General? Or would you prefer that I neutralized it?" 

"The latter." Although I might consider leaving someone behind to break the beam when we were well out of this area, just to confuse matters. 

A pair of small Turk infiltration devices, carefully placed, solved our problem, and we continued on and around several curves to a bridge suspended above a chasm. Steel chains held up a deck made of metal grating. 

As a precaution, I had one of the men string a line taken from our own supplies across before I let anyone attempt the bridge. There were so many ways in which it could have been compromised . . . but when the first man crossed, there appeared to be nothing wrong with it except for the problems inherent in its design as a simple suspension bridge. 

It was nerve-wracking. There should have been more defenses, and this would have been the perfect place for an ambush, but it was empty of anything except the bridge itself and a stray chocolate bar wrapper caught among the rocks on the far side. 

And then, beyond the bridge, we arrived at a door. The keycard lock mechanism was obsolete, of a type that Shinra had long since replaced wherever it had been in use, and Veld had it open in seconds. Vincent stepped through first, his heavy gun sweeping the area. 

"All clear." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly enough to SOLDIER ears. "We've got some racked equipment and more doors." 

"Check them," I said, and stepped forward behind him and noting that _racked equipment_ apparently meant _shelves of guns, ammunition, and explosives_ to a Turk. "See if you can find one that has anyone alive behind it." He and I had the most acute senses of anyone in the vanguard, so when Vincent went to the rightmost of the three doors, I strode over to the leftmost and put my ear to it. 

Breathing. Quick, sharp pants. I couldn't tell whether it was a monster or just a human in severe pain. 

"Found something, General?" Veld asked as I raised my head. The room was starting to fill up with Second Classes and medics. Aerith Gainsborough was still unconscious and being carried by Zack, while Reeve's android cat hopped along beside them on its stuffed moogle. 

"Perhaps," I said. "Vincent?" 

"Nothing to the right," the ex-Turk said. "Machinery behind the center door, loud enough that I can't tell what else might be there." 

"The left, then," I said. "We two will go first. Winters, your squad will back us up." 

"Yessir." The tall Corellian Second signaled his men, and they fell into a formation appropriate for blocking a doorway, swords held ready in front of them so that they could parry any bullets that appeared. 

Veld bypassed the keycard lock and pulled the door open, standing behind it so that he would be shielded from any attackers on the other side. Vincent raised his gun and stepped through, with me close on his heels. 

"General Sephiroth? Oh, thank Freya!" Tifa Lockheart rose from where she had been crouched beside a narrow cot. "Please tell me you have a Restore materia or something—I don't think he's going to last much longer." 

"We have an entire medical team with us," I said, staring at the pale figure lying on the bed. Rufus Shinra was unconscious and looked like he had lost quite a bit of blood, but I could see no injury. "What happened?" I added, moving forward so that others could enter the room. 

"In general, or to Shotgun?" She gestured to Rufus, and I felt my left eyebrow climb slightly out of alignment. 

"Was that what he told you his name was?" The Seconds were fanning out around the room now, and then Tseng and Cloud and Zack, still carrying Aerith, barged through the door one after the other. Tseng immediately crouched down beside the cot and began checking the young Shinra over. Zack went to another cot—there were several, as this seemed to be some sort of barracks area—and laid down the unconscious Cetra. Cloud went straight to his girlfriend and embraced her. 

"Thank Odin you're alright," the young Third said. 

"Except for the crick in my back from these awful beds." Tifa shrugged slightly. "Once they realized I wasn't Aerith, they mostly left me alone—I don't think they could figure out what to do with me." She shuddered and added, "That man Fuhito did talk about shooting me, but Elfe wasn't having any. Said it would make them as bad as what they were fighting against." 

"And . . . 'Shotgun'?" I asked. 

"That really isn't his name, is it? Now that I think about it, he never said it was, just that I could call him that." Tifa frowned. "And he never actually said he was a Turk, either, but if he isn't, why would he be wearing a blue suit and trying so hard to never give me a straight answer to anything?" 

"Rufus was raised by us," Tseng said quietly, from over by the bed. "He is an honourary member of the group, more or less. I suspect he may have adopted our uniform in an attempt to . . . stabilize himself mentally, given his circumstances. Now, Miss Lockheart, would you please tell me what happened to him?" 

"I'm not sure. Those slimy scientists Hojo and Fuhito were doing some kind of experiment. It backfired, he collapsed, and they just . . . left him there on the floor. I carried him back here, but there wasn't much else I could do to help." 

"The Lifestream says that he's broken." Aerith was awake, propped on one elbow, with Zack fussing over her. "Or at least, that's what the bits not chanting 'no' or reciting that poem about Chaos or arguing about you, General, are saying. I think." 

"'Broken' isn't very useful, unfortunately," Tseng said. 

"I think it might mean the materia," the Cetra said. 

"Shenlong's materia?" 

"It fits," murmured Genesis. "If whatever foolish thing they did broke the materia, it would be trying to drain his life force to reconstitute itself. However, one lightly enhanced human's life force isn't likely to be enough to complete the repair. If we want him alive, we'll have to cut the materia out of him, and soon."


	69. Chapter 69

**Zack**

"I am _not_ doing thoracic surgery in a contaminated environment like this with only the instruments I have with me," the head of the medical team was saying. "His chances of survival would be less than one percent." 

"Well, at the moment, they're _zero_ percent," Genesis offered helpfully. 

"If Hojo considered this an acceptable place to work, there will be a biology laboratory with aseptic facilities somewhere in the complex," Sephiroth said. "It shouldn't take long to find." 

He started to give orders to split the Seconds up into squads and send them off to check the other two doors from the storage-lobby-area and the ones in the far wall of this room. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep Aerith from sitting up, but she wasn't having any. Really, I didn't know why I'd fallen in love with such a stubborn girl . . . Nah, I did, really. Aerith had sparkle and depth and inner strength and kindness, and it wasn't so often that you found all of those together in such a pretty package. It was more surprising that everyone she met didn't fall in love with her. 

Right now, she was saying, "I'm fine, Zack. Stop being a mother chocobo." 

"You fainted right onto poor Spiky," I said. I was trying not to scold too hard, but that had been scary. She'd just gone out like a light, and if Cloud hadn't been there to catch her, she might have hurt herself, falling onto solid rock like that. 

Aerith giggled. "Sorry if I traumatized you, Cloud." 

"It's okay," Cloud said, in a subdued kind of voice. 

"Just don't make a habit of it," Tifa added. "You've got yourself a man already—this one's mine!" She grabbed Cloud by the arm, and both girls giggled in unison. 

" _Tiiifaaa!_ " Bright red actually didn't look all that bad with blond chocobo spikes, but if he got any redder, he was going to overheat or something. Which wouldn't have been good. 

"I'll get myself a 'Property of Aerith Gainsborough' charm that I can wear along with my dog tags," I said, pulling everyone's attention to me instead. "Just to make sure everyone knows." 

"Tattoo across your forehead might work better for that, yo," Reno offered, from where he was standing by one of the doors. 

"Except that SOLDIERs can't get inked," I said fake-seriously. "Well, we _can_ , but it fades in less than a week—mako doesn't like foreign substances inside your body." I snapped my fingers. "Hey, I know! I'll get a bandana. Have someone embroider the text on it for me, and some flowers. Yeah, that should work." It made Cloud snicker, anyway. Which had kind of been the point. 

The squads started to report back about then. They'd found a lot more passageways and storage rooms, a few private bedrooms, the kitchen and mess hall, the complex's generator (which ran on Shinra-made compressed mako packs even though this was supposed to be an AVALANCHE base—what a joke), and the lab. What they hadn't found was Hojo or Fuhito. Which I didn't like, and I bet Seph liked even less. 

The order to move Rufus was given immediately, of course, but that wasn't the only thing we needed to get done, and I wasn't at all surprised when Seph signaled me to go over and join him, Vincent, Veld, and Genesis. It was time for a quick strategy meeting. 

"Between Shears and the reports, we're finally starting to put together a picture of what this place looks like," Veld said. "This is the main level, then there's some more storage and the . . . Raven kennels, as Shears called them, on the floor below, and then at the bottom is a second lab with better access to the mako—that's several hundred feet down an elevator shaft drilled through solid rock. The only other way down is to climb the cliff face opposite the falls." 

Seph and Vince shared the kind of look that I was pretty sure meant something, although I wasn't quite sure what. 

"Risky either way," Vince observed. 

"And we can't let them escape," Sephiroth said. "Of the five of us, one stays here—that will be you, Veld. Genesis and Zack will break the elevator and climb down the shaft—I don't trust the mechanism. Vincent and I will find a way in via the cliffs." 

I felt a knot in my throat and I swallowed, hard. Risky, yeah. Not all that big a drop for a SOLDIER, but there might be people shooting at us from the bottom. But at least the elevator shaft wouldn't have a solid wall of mako waiting to smash you down and carry you away. 

"Are you sure?" I asked. 

"It wouldn't be safe for Genesis to climb the cliff, and I would prefer to have Vincent with me," was all Seph said. And that, and the way that Vincent was standing just the _teensiest_ bit inside Seph's personal space, and Seph wasn't moving away, told me everything. 

"I thought you two weren't dating," I said with a smirk worthy of Genesis. 

They gave each other another one of those looks. "We weren't," Vincent said. 

_Weren't_ , past tense. I might be kinda dense sometimes, but not so much so that I would have missed that. I grinned cheekily at them and drew in a breath . . . but got interrupted before I could say anything. 

"You realize that the puppy is going to insist on throwing you a party now," Genesis said. 

"If we all get out of this in one piece, I may even agree to let him," Seph said. "But for now, you _both_ need to concentrate on the mission." 

I wiped my face clean the moment he turned the least little bit in my direction, 'cause I still didn't want to learn what Masamune tasted like. 

"Before going to the labs, however, we will clean out the level immediately below. I don't want any surprises," Seph said, and I could agree with that. So far, no one had died on this crazy trip, and it would be nice to keep it that way. 

So while the medical team moved Rufus to the lab and worked on prepping him for surgery, and the Turks ran around squeezing all the information they could out of every computer or scrap of paper they could find, the four of us went downstairs. 

The "Raven kennels" were . . . ugh. Not quite kennels in the strict sense, but almost that bad. I mean, I'd lived in barracks while I was in Basic Training, but even there we'd been allowed a little bit of space for personal items. And the toilets had had stalls around them. There was none of that here, just racks of triple bunk beds with crappy reclaimed-synthetic blankets and no sheets in one room, and open showers and toilets in another. Everything smelled of bleach. There didn't even seem to be a way to turn the lights off. 

There weren't any Ravens in there, thankfully. I wasn't sure what we would do if we found Ravens that hadn't been ordered to attack us. I mean, we could have tried to take them back with us to Midgar, but it would have been like having a bunch of time bombs on the airship with us. And, well, the Science Department had checked Essai and Sebastian's bodies over before cremating them, and they'd said that there was no way they could have been cured even if we'd brought them back alive. They weren't much more than flesh robots by the end, apparently. 

Putting any non-combatant Ravens out of their misery would probably have been the right thing to do, but I was glad we didn't need to do it. 

They must have housed the vajradhara next door to the Ravens, and the monsters' space _was_ a kennel. No furniture, just fake-straw bedding in the corners. Not that the vijjies would have cared. On the other side of the hall, we found a big, empty room that seemed to have been used for combat practice, and a space that Vincent opened the door to, took one look inside, and shut it again. 

"Used for aggressive conditioning," was what he said, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to think about what that meant. 

The elevator was at the end of the hallway, around a bend. That was where we found the last four Ravens, scythes at ready. 

"Genesis," Sephiroth said instantly, taking a half-step back. "Vincent, support him." Which made sense, because Gen had the smallest sword, and Vince's weapon didn't need to be swung. And the Ravens kept getting in each others' way, which kinda made me wonder why they hadn't given them short swords or guns. Maybe teaching them one weapon was the best that AVALANCHE had been able to do in the time they'd had. Seph poked Masamune past Genesis' ear a couple of times, but he didn't really _need_ to—it was just a way of speeding things up. 

Once the Ravens were dealt with, Vincent did something Turk-like to the elevator control panel to send the car up about half a floor higher than it was supposed to go, so that we could get underneath, and then busted the controls and forced the emergency-brake system to engage so it wouldn't come down on our heads, either. 

Sephiroth checked the time. "We will attempt a pincer attack in twenty minutes. Be at the bottom of the shaft by then." 

When I checked the clock on my PHS, it thought it was suppertime, but my stomach knew it wasn't allowed to growl when I was on a mission. We'd eat later. Or maybe at the bottom of the elevator shaft, if we had a little time and I decided I could stomach a yummy, yummy rat bar. Ugh. 

Seph and Vince left to head back to the cliff face. That left me alone with Genesis. 

"Do you want to go first?" I asked. We'd decided to climb down, on the grounds that jumping might make enough noise to alert someone at the bottom. 

"And end up with you sitting on my head if your boot slides off a rung? Oh, please." 

"You know," I said slowly and I knelt on the floor and began to slide under the elevator car, booted feet searching for the ladder that I hoped was bolted to the side of the shaft, "I know you're always kind of snarky, but you've been worse than usual since Seph hauled you back, and I don't think it's because he's dumping the worst missions and most boring paperwork on you. What gives?" 

"Mind your own business, Puppy." 

My feet found the ladder, and I began to climb. "I could order you, you know. I'm second-in-command of SOLDIER now. And Angeal would have wanted me to straighten things out." 

"Why do you care about the good opinion of a man you killed?" 

I stopped dead with one foot in midair. "Do you think I _wanted_ to do that?" It was an unprofessional thing to say. The whole _conversation_ was unprofessional, and I never should have started it. Not in the middle of a mission when we were on a time limit. _Real bright, Zack. Seph is going to bust_ both _of us back to plain Soldier._

"I think you didn't try hard enough to save him." 

I forced myself to start climbing again. "And how was I supposed to do that?" 

" _I don't know._ " Genesis forced the words out from between his teeth. "But if Sephiroth wasn't the one, then it had to be you. _Hero of the dawn, Healer of worlds . . ._ It was your _job_ to find a way to reach him. And you didn't." 

"Gen, he didn't _want_ to be saved. I don't think he knew how to deal with his entire life being a lie. It . . . took me a while to figure that out too, and I wasn't degrading. Honour's . . . difficult. It's even more difficult when the people you're working for don't have any." I climbed down a couple more rungs in silence, then added, "You know, I think I just figured something out." 

"Oh?" 

"I thought what almost happened to Sephiroth at Nibelheim was scary . . . but at least I could tell he was starting to wander off the deep end, even if I couldn't do anything about it. With 'Geal, I couldn't tell until everything went wrong, and I barely had a chance to talk to him after that. Maybe if I'd had more time to prepare, I could have done something. I don't know. I wish I could have," I added miserably. 

We climbed for a while in silence. I was still thinking hard, though. About Genesis and Angeal. Two boys who had grown up together, joined SOLDIER together, fled Shinra together. Best friends who wouldn't let anything come between them until the end. And now one of them had retreated to the Lifestream, and the other had been left behind in the living world. 

No wonder Genesis was so snarky. It might have been less of a problem while he'd been crazy, but now that he was back to himself again, he had to be profoundly aware that the person he'd relied on all his life was gone. Like being the lone survivor of a pair of twins, I guess, although it wasn't like I knew much about that either. And he'd topped the whole thing off by killing his parents. He might not have been in his right mind at the time, but I'd bet he was feeling that, too. 

It was another one of those things that I couldn't help. I was just going to have to put up with Genesis' snark, and keep an eye on him for signs that he was about to go off the deep end too. And maybe ask Vince and even Cloud to do the same. Seph would be of no use whatsoever—he could identify emotions, and he knew what normal-Genesis looked like, but he wouldn't be able to tell whether anything unusual about his friend was good, bad, or neutral. 

They'd called Angeal "the Heart of SOLDIER". He'd been unofficially in charge of morale for the whole organization . . . and with him gone, that was going to be my job now. Funny how I'd never realized it before, although I'd already been _doing_ the job in my own half-assed way. But there was no one else. Vince had the perception, sure, but he didn't _care_ about the other SOLDIERs, and he was about as comforting as a Turk interrogation. Gen was too self-absorbed, and Seph's awareness of social norms wasn't good enough. It had to be me. 

I groped for another rung with my foot, and nearly fell on my ass when my foot found the bottom of the elevator shaft instead. _Focus, Zack._ I reached over my shoulder to touch the hilt of the Buster Sword, but didn't draw it yet. 

_I won't let you down,_ I told the spirit that I hoped was watching me from the Lifestream. 

"Out of the way, Puppy." Genesis' boot almost hit my ear, and I sighed and moved. 

I checked the time on my PHS. "Five minutes," I reported, reaching into my pocket and pulling out that rat bar. It's difficult to make a face and _stuff_ your face at the same time, but I managed. 

I just hoped that Vince and Seph were okay.


	70. Chapter 70

**Rufus**

_Feels like fire._

_Where am I?_

_Tseng?_

"There's no anesthetic." 

"Hojo isn't interested in his subjects' comfort." 

_Tseng . . . what do I say to you? I screwed up pretty badly. Funding AVALANCHE was stupid. Relying on them was worse. And Hojo . . ._

"I'm more interested in keeping him from thrashing around. Just a twitch from him might make me accidentally cut something vital. I don't trust those straps." 

"Would a Sleepel help?" 

"Only if you can find some way of keeping it from dissipating the moment we cut." 

"Might have something here, ma'am. Canister of chloroethane. We'll have to watch his life signs like hawks, though." 

"Is it dangerous?" 

"No worse than any other anesthetic, Mr. Turk. Chloroethane isn't used in properly equipped hospitals anymore, but that's because we've found other drugs that are just as effective and won't make the patient throw up on your shoes. Vice-President Shinra is in good health overall, so as long as we keep his airway clear, a little vomiting shouldn't kill him." 

_I don't think I'm going to enjoy this._

"Very well. Go ahead." 

"Thank you for your kind permission. Corporal, find me a mask." 

"Rufus?" Fingers gripping mine. Something to focus on besides the voices. "Please hold on." 

"Tse'? S'rry." I fumbled the words, slurring them. 

"Did he say something?" 

"No." 

"Are you certain?" 

The fingers squeezed mine. "I thought I heard an apology, and I have never known Rufus to apologize." 

Smiling was too much effort, but I felt like I would have if I could, and that feeling followed me back down into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, extremely short chapter. Sorry about that.


	71. Chapter 71

**Cloud**

It was difficult to let Tifa out of my sight. I mean, I'd been so damned _worried_. Even when I'd seen her alive and in one piece, right there in front of me, I hadn't entirely believed she was real until I'd hugged her. I would have liked to kiss her too, but I didn't quite dare, not in front of General Sephiroth and everyone. I didn't care that she looked tired, or like she'd been sleeping in her clothes. I was just glad she was alright. 

One worry down. Now I just had to hope that General Sephiroth and Zack would both be okay. I hated having been left up here to do security for the medical team when they were going off to fight, but it wasn't like I could argue. I mean, they weren't even taking any of the Seconds along—why would they take a newly-minted Third, even a talented one? 

I didn't have an assignment after the strike teams left. I mean, we'd already cleared out the main level, I didn't know anything about medicine, and there were only so many doors we needed to guard. All I could do was pace. Well, okay, I could have played cards with Reno if I'd been dumb enough, but Zack had warned me about Reno and poker, on top of Vincent warning me about Turks and gambling in general. The red-head got a game going with Rude and two of the Seconds instead. 

"Cloud? Are you okay?" Tifa put a hand on my shoulder as I pretended to watch Reno cheat at poker. 

"Yeah—I'm just tired of feeling useless." 

"You're not." That, unexpectedly, was Aerith, who had just gotten kicked out of the lab-slash-operating-room. She offered me a smile, gentle and sweet. "There's a reason you need to be here. I don't know what it is yet, but I promise you that you aren't useless." 

"Are you saying that as a Cetra or as a friend?" I asked. 

"Both. The Lifestream said it, but also . . . I think you need more confidence in yourself. And Zack agrees, for what it's worth." 

_So where was the Lifestream when I was still living in Nibelheim?_ I'd lost a lot of my bitterness in the past few weeks, but it still stung. 

The doors to the operating room opened again and a couple of members of the medical team came out, stretching and muttering complaints. Tseng immediately detached himself from the wall he'd been holding up and stepped into their path. 

"What is Vice-President Shinra's condition?" 

The short woman on the left blinked and said, "We have the materia out. It really is cracked, right in two. His vital signs have improved, and the doctor is sealing up the hole in his chest with a cure spell. If nothing goes wrong, the Vice-President should be back to his old self after a few days of rest and good food." 

If I hadn't been watching him closely, I'm not sure I would have seen the littlest bit of stiffness go out of Tseng's shoulders. He really had been worried about Rufus, I guess, and not just because it was his job. If Rufus really had been raised by the Turks, did that make Tseng sort of his big brother? 

"Can you give me the materia?" Aerith asked. 

The medic raised her eyebrows. "Sure, but why?" 

"It needs to go back to the Lifestream to heal." 

Okay, whatever. I was still getting used to thinking of Summon materia as sort-of people. I'd never even considered what you would have to do to heal one. It had to be another Cetra thing. 

The medic blinked again slowly. "I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't take it, but I'd wait until they're done with Mr. Shinra first. I mean, it isn't like the materia's going to get worse if you wait fifteen minutes, right?" 

"I guess not," Aerith said. 

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the other end of the room, where our two AVALANCHE prisoners were being kept. Assuming Elfe was a prisoner. Unlike Shears, she wasn't tied up or anything. Rude had carried her in here, but he'd been treating her . . . pretty gently. Like his boss's daughter, although I wasn't sure that was a good idea, given that she could take on two squads of Seconds all by herself. Hell, there was a rumour she'd fought Sephiroth and lived to tall about it, although I hadn't quite had the nerve to ask the General, or even Zack, if it was true. 

Either way, she was a dangerous person, and I was kind of worried that the Turks were treating her as someone to look after, rather than as a threat . . . and wasn't that a joke. I, Cloud Strife, rookie SOLDIER Third Class, was worried that _the Turks weren't being paranoid enough_. 

Anyway, it looked like Elfe had just woken up . . . or at least, she was on her feet, but I wasn't sure she was _awake_ , not with that glazed expression on her face. Rude had grabbed onto her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides, but even as I watched, she broke free, and the Turk staggered backward, falling onto her cot. 

"Elfe!" Shears called. They'd put him on a cot and cuffed his ankles to it, and he was jerking violently, trying to get loose. The metal refused to give. It was probably cutting into his legs, but he didn't stop fighting. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? We don't want to piss these guys off!" 

"I have to go," the woman said, her face still blank. 

"Go where? _Why?_ Damn it all!" Shears snarled the words, still fighting the cuffs. 

"It's calling. We need . . . to be made whole . . ." Elfe took another step, nearly trampling Reno. 

The redhead kept his cool, though. "What's calling, yo?" 

"Zirconaide . . ." Elfe held up her hand. There was a red glow seeping out from under the fingerless glove she wore. 

Reno's eyes widened, and he looked sort of panicky for half a second. "Isn't that the fourth strongest Summon there is or something? From the fireball-brain's debriefing." 

"Yes," Rude said. He'd managed to sit up on the edge of the bed. 

Elfe had turned and was heading for the door that led to the rest of the complex, the one Zack and General Sephiroth and the others had left through. Which was going to take her right past us. I swallowed and drew Echo, just in case, and Tifa and Nanaki stepped up beside me, forming a wall between Elfe and Aerith, but not blocking Elfe's path. 

I didn't want to fight her. Not really. But there were things I needed to protect. 

The one who stepped out in front of Elfe was Veld, the Head Turk. She didn't seem to notice him at first, not until he grabbed her shoulder to stop her advance. 

"Felicia . . ." 

She stared at him blankly, not trying to stave his ribcage in or anything, but clearly waiting for him to get out of the way. 

"Please, Cupcake . . ." 

I felt a very inappropriate laugh try to bubble its way up my throat, and swallowed it back down again. I mean, _Cupcake_? The head of the Turks' nickname for his daughter had been _Cupcake_? In some ways, Veld was scarier than Sephiroth, and he . . . _Oh, get a grip,_ I told myself. 

Elfe's lips parted. In a very small voice, she said, "Daddy?" 

"It's me." 

Elfe—Felicia—shook her head. "In the dreams, you're always there. You, and Mommy too. I hate remembering the dreams. It hurts so much to wake up." 

"You're not dreaming." I'd never seen a Turk look sad before. I guess Veld wasn't even trying to hide his emotions. Not under the circumstances. "I'm here. I'm sorry it took me so long." 

" _Awake,_ " she whispered. "I'm . . . I have to go . . . but I don't want to leave . . ." She was shaking now, as though she was doing something horribly difficult, and her face wasn't expressionless anymore. Her eyes were narrowed, her teeth gritted. "Zirconaide . . . no . . ." 

Veld put his arms around her. It could have been the stupidest thing possible, but maybe he didn't care. He whispered something into Elfe's ear, and she leaned into him. 

"Cut it out," she said then, and Veld blinked, looking a little nonplussed. "I don't know how long I'm going to be able to resist the pull from the materia. I need . . . it might kill me, but I think while it's there, I'll never be myself. Please, Daddy . . ." 

"Don't worry, Cupcake," Veld said. "Just come this way a little . . . that's it . . ." With an arm around her, he guided Elfe toward the lab/clinic. 

Before they could get there, though, there was an even brighter flare of light, and Elfe's glove caught on fire. Veld tore it off her, and for a moment I thought his _hand_ had caught on fire. Then the flames went out and I saw the gleam of materia under where the skin had been, and I realized his hand was prosthetic. 

There was a high-pitched noise followed by a wet tearing sound, and the materia shard that had been embedded in the back of Elfe's hand ripped itself out of her flesh and shot towards the back door, nearly hitting Tseng. It hit the door hard enough to leave a dent, then fell to the ground. The light in it flickered and went out. 

"What," Tifa said, "was _that_?" 

"I don't know," Aerith said. "But it wasn't good. It's . . . gone quiet. All except for the true voice of the Planet, and someone with a very deep voice talking in what I think might be Wutainese." 

"And what is the Planet saying?" Tseng asked. 

Aerith frowned. " _Broken. Dead. Wrong. Fear. Betrayed. Cleanse. Misplaced. Incompletion._ There's a sense of . . . mourning, I guess. And terror. And anticipation. And it wants me to do something, but I'm not entirely sure what. As usual," she added wryly. "I wish I'd had more time to talk to Bugenhagen in Cosmo Canyon. Maybe after this is over . . ." 

"Elfe said something about being made whole," I recalled. "And the materia she had is just a fragment. Do you think someone was trying to put the whole thing back together?" 

"With one piece missing, it must have come together wrong," Nanaki observed. "And it _is_ a Summon materia—the inert form of an Immortalis. Reassembling the materia incorrectly . . ." His voice trailed off, and I think we all frowned. 

"There's your _broken_ and _dead_ and _wrong_ ," I said. "And . . . what if they found something to substitute for the missing piece? Zack would probably say something about summoning zombies," I added, trying to lighten the mood, but it came out not sounding like a joke at all. 

"Unfortunately, I think Soldier Strife may be right," Tseng said. "It fits together very tidily." 

"Fuhito was looking for the other parts of the materia," Shears contributed from his bed. "Said it would fix Elfe if we gave her them, too. His word never was worth shit." 

And Fuhito was probably wherever Hojo was. Where Zack and Sephiroth and the others were. I gritted my teeth because, as usual, there was nothing I could do, and the tension was eating into me. 

"Someone needs to give me something to do before I go crazy," Tifa said, echoing my thoughts, and we all shuffled our feet a bit. 

"Miss?" one of the medics said. "Here's that materia." 

Aerith extended her hand and accepted the two halves of the Shenlong Summon. At least someone had taken the time to rinse the blood off it, although there were still some suspicious droplets on its surface. I was glad I couldn't tell if they were pink. 

"Well," Aerith said, "you could all come with me while I return this to the Lifestream. It shouldn't take long, but it's better than standing here . . . and I doubt Tseng will let me go alone, even if it's just back to the falls and we've already dealt with most of the monsters." 

"Correct," Tseng said. "I would go with you myself, but . . ." He glanced pointedly at the door to the lab. "Likewise, Reno and Rude are needed here. However, I would appreciate it if you avoided taking any unnecessary risks." 

"That means that if you see anything that even looks like a monster's shadow, you're to come running back here like your pants are on fire," Captain Luxiere added. "That's an order, Strife." 

I snapped a salute at him. "Yes, sir." 

"So, you're the SOLDIER, Cloud," Tifa said. "How should we do this?" 

"Nanaki goes at the front—he has the sharpest senses. Then you, then Aerith, then me." Basic line-of-march stuff, but it still felt odd to be saying it. I half-expected someone to say _Who died and put you in charge?_ or something like that, but Tifa and Nanaki both just nodded thoughtfully. 

"You don't have to be so serious about it," Aerith said with a gentle smile. "But it's good to see you growing into yourself, Cloud. I think the orchestra is going to be done tuning up soon." 

I thought that was just one of the weird non-sequiturs that Zack said he got from her sometimes. It wasn't until we were halfway back to the makofall that I remembered the conversation we'd had in the hospital room the morning after Hojo had trashed the Shinra building. So . . . giving orders meant I was growing into myself? Maybe I really would be "Major Cloud Strife, SOLDIER First Class" one day. That was a fascinating, terrifying, _wonderful_ thought. The number of people who can push a high-ranking First Class around is . . . small. 

We didn't run into any monsters in the tunnels. It was quiet all the way to the makofall. 

Aerith went right to the edge of the ledge. I didn't try to stop her—I'd grown up in the mountains, and I knew good rock from bad. The ledge was sturdy, so she would be okay unless she did something really stupid, like leaning too far forward or trying to jump. 

Aerith fitted the two pieces of the materia back together, then drew her arm back like a baseball pitcher and threw the cracked orb into the makofall, where it was instantly swallowed up. She turned back toward us with a smile. 

"That's it?" Tifa asked. 

"That's it," Aerith said. 

"So now we go back?" 

"There's no hurry," I said, although the makofall wasn't really any more interesting than the base we'd just emerged from. I glanced around, searching for anything that wasn't mako or bare rock, and spotted a small, out-of-place shadow. A couple of steps closer, and I could tell it was a piece of torn black leather. As far as I knew, there was only one person on this trip who wore anything like that, but how had Sephiroth torn his coat here? There was no other evidence of a fight. Maybe there had been a monster when he and Vincent had approached the cliff face. Or he'd just caught his pocket on a rock. 

Then I noticed a gleam out of the corner of my eye. Something that looked like a faintly glowing, but empty, sphere of blown glass lay on the ground in the shadow of a rock. I prodded it cautiously with Echo, then with the toe of my boot, before picking it up. It seemed weirdly heavy for its size. 

"That's the protomateria I gave General Sephiroth," Aerith said from behind me. "What's it doing here?" 

"His pocket must have torn," I said, nodding towards the scrap of black leather. 

"Cloud, this isn't good." 

"Let me guess," I said. "The Lifestream is screaming at you again because he doesn't have it with him?" 

Zack's girlfriend shrugged. "It's more like moaning, but close enough. I still don't know why, or what it's for, but it's probably important. Again." 

"Do you ever get tired of having to listen to the Planet?" Okay, so it sort of . . . slipped out. 

"All the time . . . but it doesn't have anyone left but me. And maybe Genesis Rhapsodos, now, but I'm not sure he takes requests." 

Tifa snickered. I didn't blame her. I mean, I didn't know Genesis all that well, but I'd already figured out there weren't very many people he'd take orders from. Sephiroth, after some argument. And maybe the goddess he was always going on about. 

"Can you guys get back to the AVALANCHE base without me?" I asked. 

Tifa blinked. "Why? Cloud, what are you going to do?" 

"Someone has to take this to the General," I said, and Aerith nodded. Tifa would probably argue, but, well, I knew. That it was necessary. That if he didn't have it, something would go horribly wrong.


	72. Chapter 72

**Vincent**

I suppose we had been taking the monsterlessness of the area AVALANCHE had strewn with traps for granted. Not that the flock of winged eyeballs that came swooping down as we approached the makofall was able to harm either of us, but one of them tore Sephiroth's coat and left him examining the damage with an irritated expression. 

"We'll get you another coat," I said. 

"Over the years, I suppose this one has become something like an old friend. Perhaps I can have it repaired." 

"Mmh." If that was what he wanted, I'd help him scour Midgar for a leatherworker up to the task. Right now, however, we had a different job to do. 

I had expected the stones to be slick and overgrown with moss, but it turned out that the makofall wasn't much like a waterfall except in form. It wasn't wet, and didn't give off spray. That made things easier . . . which, in turn, instantly made me wary. Just as anything that looks too good to be true generally is, any mission that looks like it's going to be easy generally turns out to be painfully difficult. And we were up against Hojo here. 

We reached the lower level at the foot of the falls without any monsters trying to pluck us off our perch, and found a smooth stone surface pocked with patchy pools of yellow-green stagnant mako. 

«They've probably been there for centuries,» Chaos remarked. «The stuff of the Lifestream doesn't dry up—it just goes crazy talking to itself, and this seems pretty far along. Not that the clean parts of the Lifestream are impressing me very much either, right now.» 

I couldn't see any doors, but there was a pipe sticking through the rock and down into the torrent of mako flowing past us. Following it around a boulder and into an alcove allowed me to find the door. 

Sephiroth put his hand on my shoulder and held up his PHS as I reached for the lock. Two minutes early. Perhaps it was just as well, because Chaos chose that moment to tell me, «There's something wrong on the other side of that door.» 

"Meaning?" I muttered, making a small gesture to Sephiroth to tell him I was talking to Chaos and not just to myself. 

«I don't know. I think Minerva is trying to tell me something, but I can't hear her voice through all the other voices. There's a lot of screaming and babbling going on.» 

"Genesis mentioned that. Is this something new, or has it been going on since we came within range of the makofall?" 

«Something new. I'm not trying to annoy you this time, host-mine. If Minerva is disturbed, she may try to trigger Omega and me prematurely, and I'm in no hurry to destroy this world. It's much too interesting. And you'd be angry at me if I harmed your pretty mate.» 

Sephiroth was waiting patiently. I offered him a shrug and said, "Chaos gave me a non-specific warning." 

His eyes narrowed. "What could be dangerous enough to disturb that thing?" 

"I wish I knew." Rather than dwell on it, I pulled out Cerberus, considered the materia I had slotted to it, and traded them for a Poison and an Added Effect, since poison sometimes worked under the oddest of circumstances. Beside me, Sephiroth stretched and then unsheathed Masamune. 

"It's time," he said, and I broke the lock and opened the door. 

I'd been expecting another tunnel. Instead, the door let out into a high-ceilinged room that appeared to be a specialized laboratory, with a large tank, or possibly swimming pool, of mako as its centerpiece. Stalactites and stalagmites had been crudely chopped off to provide space for the equipment. Standing near a console to one side of the swimming pool was a youngish man with short, dark hair and glasses, whom I recognized from his Turk file. He didn't turn around as the door opened. Instead, he seemed to be staring at the contents of a small mako canister, one that held only a gallon or so of the glowing substance. There was also an object floating in it, a mottled globe that looked brown but was probably red. Summon materia? 

« _That_ is wrong,» Chaos told me the moment I noticed the globe. «Empty, but . . . not.» 

"Hands up and step away from the console," I snapped, sounding altogether too much like a character from some police-related movie for my own comfort, but we needed, if possible, to have Fuhito answer a few questions before we killed him. _Empty, but not_ didn't sound good to me. 

"Oh, I'm sorry—I didn't realize we had guests." Fuhito raised his hands and began to turn around slowly . . . then lashed out at the mako canister with a sudden violent gesture, sending it tumbling to the floor. It shattered, and the materia inside rolled away and fell into the swimming pool of mako. Sephiroth moved to stop it, but he was a split second too late. He kicked Fuhito to the floor instead, planting a boot on the AVALANCHE scientist's chest and resting Masamune's tip lightly against the man's throat. 

"No more games," he warned. "You will answer our questions, or I will cut you into very small pieces. Slowly. While avoiding the major blood vessels, to ensure that you get maximum benefit. Now. What was that materia?" 

Fuhito smiled. "An experiment." 

"Of what nature? I have yet to meet a scientist who isn't inclined to tell anyone and everyone about his accomplishments." 

"Replacing the core of a Summon materia with an artificial construct." Fuhito's smile never went away. In fact, it widened. 

"What materia?" 

"Zirconaide." 

Inside me, Chaos said . . . something. I didn't recognize the word, but I was fairly sure it was obscene. Meanwhile, I was remembering a list: _Chaos_ , _Minerva_ , _Jenova_ , _Zirconaide_ , _Knights of the Round_. 

Fuhito and Hojo had been tampering with the fourth-most-powerful Immortalis in existence. 

That did not sound good at all. 

"Last question. Where is Hojo?" 

Fuhito's smile became positively beatific. "Behind you." 

I whipped Cerberus' muzzle over, tracking across the space behind Sephiroth. Nothing. Empty space, consoles, and the mako swimming pool. Somehow, I doubted Hojo had learned how to be invisible, but at the same time, Fuhito didn't seem to be lying. 

I checked again, more slowly. The consoles didn't offer much cover to someone not crouched on the floor, and Hojo's ego wouldn't let him do that. Not to mention that, with all those tentacles, he had been rather larger than a normal human being when we had last seen him. But that only left . . . 

Mako doesn't sound like water when it splashes, or when drops of it fall. Instead, it produces an odd echo effect. I squeezed Cerberus' trigger as green liquid rose out of the tank in the floor in a surging eruption that made mako wash around Sephiroth's boots, but although I heard the triple bark of my gun, the bullets didn't seem to do any damage to the figure surging up and out. 

He was still recognizable. His skin was blue-grey, his head was swollen to a size completely out of proportion with his body, everything below his waist was made up of tentacles, and the creature that rose from the pool was somehow _still recognizable_ as Hojo. There wasn't much that I found disturbing anymore, but that managed to do it. 

"The ungrateful boy who wouldn't listen to his mother and the wretched Turk," Hojo said, with a snort. "Why did you bother coming here?" The mottled Zirconaide materia was in his hands, and he played with it as he spoke. 

"Orders," I said, to spare Sephiroth. At any rate, it was almost true. 

"Bah. But I suppose I should expect no better—from you or from him. You have gravely disappointed me, Sephiroth." 

"Good." Sephiroth raised Masamune from Fuhito's throat, pointing the blade at Hojo instead. "I would be utterly disgusted with myself if I made you proud of me. I am very, very tired of being used by you, Hojo." 

Hojo stiffened. "I _made_ you. Gave you all the power you have pent up within that body. And in return, all I asked was that you obey a few simple commands." 

"More than twenty years of torture at your hands in return for abilities I never asked for, and you insist that I owe you some kind of debt?" Sephiroth shook his head. "And I thought that _I_ had a difficult time understanding social norms." 

Hojo's Turk file included medical documents diagnosing him with narcissistic personality disorder, which had worsened as he aged. All other copies of those documents had been destroyed, by order of old Shinra, who hadn't wanted to hurt the scientist's oh-so-tender feelings. And Hojo reacted true to form now. 

"You owe me _every_ debt, boy. Without me, you wouldn't exist." 

"Which might have been for the better," Sephiroth said. He swung Masamune through the air. The sword cried out, a high, eerie note. "Regardless, only one of us will be leaving here alive." 

He took his foot off Fuhito's chest and kicked the AVALANCHE scientist out of his way. Fuhito had enough presence of mind to roll to a spot where he was half-protected by one of the consoles. Being an ecoterrorist must have enhanced his survival instincts. Meanwhile, Hojo was lashing out at Sephiroth with his tentacles, but Sephiroth dodged them all, and cut at their roots. I brought Cerberus back up, and aimed at Hojo's face. 

At least this time, I was certain that the bullets struck their target. They briefly created a trio of pockmarks across Hojo's forehead as Masamune sliced into him lower down. But then the holes vanished as though they had never been, and it didn't look like the poison effect was kicking in either. 

I muttered a word under my breath, one of the ones I'd learned from my father, that usually made Chaos laugh as it heard me mangle the pronunciation—Grimoire Valentine had been able to read, and curse in, a number of dead languages, but he had never had access to a native speaker that could tell them how their quirks operated. This time, however, Chaos was ominously silent inside me, although I could tell it was awake and watching through my eyes. 

Well, then. It appeared my gun was no good. That still didn't make me defenseless, however. It was true that Cerberus couldn't slot more than two materia, but the Shinra Alpha that banded my arm just above where my glove ended held six. Including one of Sephiroth's several mastered Contains. 

As a Turk, I had never been all that powerful a caster. Like most of us, I'd carried a set of basic materia—elementals, curatives, a Barrier, and a Seal, which was particularly useful for covert ops—but squeezing off more than a couple of top-level spells in a given mission had left me feeling drained. However, I'd tested myself a few times recently while out on monster hunts and knew that that was no longer the case. 

«Of course not. I'm a direct line to the Lifestream, which is the power source for all your little spells. And we need to get rid of him before he tries to use that abhomination he's holding.» 

"The materia?" 

«Yes. I don't understand what he's done to it, but I doubt it's good. Zirconaide isn't in it, but it isn't empty, either.» 

I filed that away in the back of my mind, hoping that I would never need the information, and gestured to help focus the spell I was casting. _Break_. Flare and Tornado were more powerful, but they were difficult to keep on target, and I didn't want to catch Sephiroth with friendly fire. 

The spell staggered Hojo a little, or at least as much as something that stood on tentacles could be said to stagger. Sephiroth, in the meanwhile, had chopped several tentacles off and left them to wriggle, disembodiedly, on the cavern floor, but he seemed to be having trouble finding any vital points to attack. I'd seen him catch Hojo across the chest, the neck, the face . . . all without success. The wounds healed almost immediately. 

You heard about monsters like these, whose regenerative capabilities were so high that the only way to kill them was to keep attacking until they depleted their energy reserves and effectively healed themselves to death. This was going to be tedious. 

«Let me out!» Chaos snarled. 

"No." 

«I won't hurt your mate! Let me out before that _thing_ uses the materia!» 

"I'd give even odds that he won't." Hojo wasn't a risk-taker, in my experience (and I might well know the slimy bastard better than anyone else alive—terrifying thought). "And even if he does, it may not do anything. Let me concentrate." Plus, the only way for me to let Chaos out was to take enough damage to trigger a high-level Limit Break, and even if I was nearly impossible to kill now, that would hurt. 

I invoked another Break spell, and another, while Hojo thrashed wildly. Actually, although I wasn't about to tell Chaos so, I was trying to angle for a shot at the materia. If I knocked it out of the former scientist's hands, we would have one less thing to worry about. 

I didn't manage to get that angle, but after what seemed like an eternity, we started to do some visible damage that went beyond hacking off tentacles that then just grew back, and Hojo started to slow down. Maybe it would be over soon. 

Then I caught a quick flash of the materia between Hojo's hands as he pulled it in against his chest. And then it was gone, and greenish light erupted around Hojo as he started to laugh. 

Sephiroth, sensibly, didn't bother to wait for whatever this was to run its course. He charged straight at the ex-scientist, with Masamune stabbing out. But a shockwave sent him tumbling end over end nearly to the far end of the room. I shot, and saw the bullet halt in midair and whip back toward me. It left a streak of blood on my cheek, although the wound healed almost instantly. 

I formed another Break spell and threw it at the cocoon of green light that now hung over the mako swimming pool. It made no impression. 

When the cocoon burst, seconds later, and slapped us with another shockwave that damaged some of the consoles, what came out . . . was still clearly Hojo. A floating Hojo with a brown exoskeleton covering most of his body. A mixture of scythe-like limbs and tentacles now dangled where his legs used to be, and an odd assemblage of curved plates and spikes grew from his back and shoulders. And he was still laughing. 

As we once more attempted to attack (how many reloads did I have left? I almost panicked when it took me a moment to remember), Hojo waved an arm across in front of himself and a bunch of tiny explosions manifested in front of him, spreading rapidly. Dodging completely was impossible, and I ended up with tattered trousers and a chunk missing from my left ear. Sephiroth somersaulted in midair, but left a few strands of silver hair behind to drift to the ground without him. Masamune cut straight across the thing's forearm, but the scar the sword left once more vanished in seconds. 

"Any ideas?" I muttered as Cerberus barked. 

«So _now_ you want my help?» 

"I didn't think we were facing a refugee from a bad monster movie." I'd shown Chaos a few of those, one restless night. 

«Maybe you can convince him to take time out to give a bad villain speech. Or you _could_ let me out, the way I told you to do in the first place.» 

I grimaced and hefted Cerberus, knowing he was right: while it wasn't a guarantee, at the moment, chances were we would drop from sheer exhaustion before we took Hojo down. I pointed the pistol at my gut. My time in the Turks had taught me how to nerve myself up to do unpleasant and painful things, and this was no exception. 

So much of my attention was on what I was doing that I didn't realize until I felt a sting in my neck that I'd just heard a cough of compressed air. My fingers found a dart and yanked it from my flesh. I turned and saw Fuhito letting go of the single-shot dartgun, which clattered to the floor. He'd shot from a prone position, and I cursed myself for forgetting about him even as my vision blurred. 

Grimly, I tried to tighten my finger on Cerberus' trigger—this was one of the very few situations I'd ever been in where shooting myself might actually make everything better. My hands had no strength in them, though, and he'd always been a stiff gun. 

I crashed to the floor like a sodden log and lay there, unmoving but _aware_ , and wishing I'd shot Fuhito when I'd had the chance.


	73. Chapter 73

**Sephiroth**

I had never hated anyone or anything as much as I hated Hojo. 

In retrospect, it is . . . somewhat bizarre that it took me so long to realize that. I suppose that without a proper gauge for what constituted normal human behaviour, I had been unable to understand how much he had truly hurt me. And I had accepted that hurt, even after I became strong enough and skilled enough to kill him, when I was six or so. It hadn't even been because he had something to hold over me, something outside me to threaten or some privilege he could take away. No. I had tolerated the labs because they had been the only thing that I knew. I had been unable to imagine the contour of my life taking on any other form. 

And now . . . now everything had changed in just a few short weeks. I was free. Although I was still learning what that meant. 

I didn't scream when Vincent fell, but I felt a twist of cold rage form inside me. My anger was always cold, and hidden. Anything else had been trained out of me in the labs. I turned the emotional pressure into action instead, leaping toward him, intent on catching my partner before he landed, but Hojo threw beams of light between us to slow me, and Vincent struck the floor on his left side, bounced slightly, and lay there helpless. 

_I'm sorry._ I bit back the words as I snatched up the dart he had been shot with. Even under the stench of mako, I recognized the smell of the drug it had been loaded with. It was a paralytic, not a tranquilizer as such, and Hojo had always taken a sadistic pleasure in using it on me. My guess was that Vincent would be out of the fight for at least ten minutes (if not longer), during which I would have to hold Hojo's attention and stall by any means available. I wasn't willing to risk having an attack land on Vincent while he was helpless, because I couldn't guarantee that whatever monster he turned into wouldn't be incapacitated as well, or what would happen if one of his other-forms was killed. 

I had to defend him. It wasn't my usual role in a battle, but I knew it well enough. Stay between the enemy and the person you meant to protect, and block or parry attacks. Let nothing past. 

Hojo gave me a disgusted look as I took up a stance between them, with Masamune raised. 

"Am I to understand you are actually _worried_ about that miserable excuse for a Turk? Where did I go wrong with you, boy?" 

I didn't want to talk to him . . . but it was an effective way to stall for time, so I found some words. It barely even mattered what they were, as long as they provoked Hojo enough to keep his attention without pushing him to lash out. "You disregarded basic psychology and treated me like one of Scarlet's malfunctioning robots. In any sane world, no one would permit you to have custody of a cockroach, much less a child." Was that a bit too much? I hoped not, but Hojo's ego went in odd directions sometimes. 

"I made you strong." 

"You made me _brittle_ —but that was what you wanted, wasn't it? Just enough weak points to make it possible for you to use me. You and, ideally, no one else." I had known that for quite a long time. And speaking of time, where were Genesis and Zack? They should have been here by now. Had Hojo filled whatever tunnel led from here to the elevator with malboros? 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Fuhito trying to slither away behind a console on his stomach. I hit him with a Freeze spell, and he stopped moving and just lay there, covered with frost. I wasn't sure whether I'd killed him or not, and I wasn't about to check just now. 

"Did you think that I would never figure you out?" I continued to Hojo, without missing a beat. "You had my intelligence tested repeatedly when I was a child. You know what the results were as well as I do." 

"And that was when I realized you weren't fit to be more than a vessel. Your native intelligence was far too dangerous." 

I gave him a cold look, one of the ones that could drive Thirds to their knees without my needing to say a word. "A vessel for what? Jenova? She didn't have enough mind left to fill the brain of a bandersnatch." 

Hojo chuckled. I had never found it a pleasant sound, and even less so now. "Originally, I had thought there was some hope that Jenova's materia, the greater part of her _self_ , had survived, but years of searching failed to produce it. And so I conceived a different plan." 

I waited. Hojo was always in the habit of drawing things out. Fortunate that this time, that was just what I wanted. 

"It took some time to come up with a method of—" 

"What the _hell_ is that?" 

"Move out of the way, Puppy!" 

I had seldom been as relieved to hear Genesis' voice as I was at that moment. I was a little less relieved when the fireballs came, but it wasn't the first time I'd needed to cut them from the air, and I managed to deflect them all away from both Vincent and myself. Some of the consoles weren't so lucky, and I saw Hojo singe some tentacle tips by slapping a few of the projectiles down himself. 

"You degenerate fool! This is delicate apparatus!" 

So there was still some sort of experiment or process going on here. I didn't like that. I made a mental note to destroy the consoles at the first opportunity. Hojo still had to be dealt with first, though, or he'd just build another set of equipment somewhere. 

"Zack!" I called. "Get Vincent out of here. We don't have time to wait for what they shot him with to wear off. Genesis . . ." Deliberately, I switched to communicating in gestures. In theory, Hojo _might_ have learned the standard military hand-sign, but I expected his ego would have prevented it. I signaled for a diagonal approach, so that we could both attack from different directions without risking hitting each other. Genesis sniffed, but also took up his position. 

Tentacles. Apparently those appendages were still vulnerable to attack, even if they healed quickly. Eventually, chopping away at those tentacles should wear Hojo down, draining his strength by forcing him to heal. Although I did wish I knew more about where the power of the Immortalis came from. The Cetra certainly hadn't injected their demigods directly with mako. Was Hojo, having equipped the Zirconaide materia, now able to draw energy directly from the Lifestream? And what would it take to make it cut him off? 

There was no point in worrying about questions I had no way of answering. Better to keep my mind on more immediate matters. Like the fact I was going to have to attack Hojo from below, which didn't thrill me. Who knew what he might try to drop on my head while I was striking at the bases of his tentacles? But I would do the most damage by attacking the thickest parts. We didn't have eternity in which to deal with him. 

In synchrony, Genesis and I dashed forward, swords raised. The air trapped under the mess of Hojo's tentacles and spiky limbs had the thick, unpleasant smell of a boar behemoth in rut, and the blood our swords drew was equally vile, dark and stinking. I thought I smelled a hint of rot, buried under musk and metal. Perhaps Hojo's engineered virus was beginning to cause a form of degradation in him, or absorbing the Zirconaide materia had confused his body. It was a shame we didn't have time to wait for him to fall apart on his own. 

Testing, I threw a Bolt spell in the direction of the equipment. Hojo interposed himself and blocked it. What in hell was he up to there? 

"So protective of those consoles," Genesis said, eyes narrowing. "Do you have any idea what they control?" 

Genesis never had had much in the way of mechanical skills. "Some of it looks like reactor equipment," I said, batting away a tentacle. "I expect that part controls the flow of mako through this area. One of them . . ." I frowned, picturing it in my mind's eye, considering controls and readouts and labels. " . . . I think it's monitoring a materia nursery." Which explained the pit full of mako: it would be intended for dipping and bathing cores. So why was there no dipping apparatus? 

None of this made any sense. I didn't like it when Hojo failed to make sense. My instincts were screaming at me that something was wrong, wrong, _wrong_. 

"A nursery for a singular materia," Hojo said, his voice rasping against my nerves. "After all, Minerva has never been consolidated before. The most powerful there is, save for Chaos. And I already had the perfect vessel for her: an Immortalis with no materia of his own. Well, perfect in all except gender, but by the time I had decided what your proper use was, it was too late to castrate you—the President would never have allowed it. A pity." 

"Oh, now _that_ is the vilest thing I've ever heard one of you test-tube lovers say, and I've heard a remarkable amount of vileness come from your mouths," Genesis said. 

"You do _not_ just talk about cutting a guy's dick off," Zack added, returning from the hallway. 

I shrugged fatalistically. The pain wouldn't have mattered to Hojo, and I suspected the flesh would eventually have grown back, as my toes and earlobes had when he'd severed them as tests. I could guess what Zack's and Genesis' reactions would be like if I told them any of that, though—even I knew that none of it could be remotely considered normal. 

Hojo just sniffed. "I can scarcely expect any of you to underst—" He stopped in mid-word and made a hissing noise, clutching at his temples. Pain. Probably trivial by my standards—for someone who liked inflicting agony so much, Hojo had a difficult time taking it. "What . . . ?" He shuddered, shaking his head. That turned into whipping it from side to side as though trying to dislodge something, and clawing at his face and the back of his neck. 

I wasn't certain what was going on, but it hardly mattered. My purpose in being here was to see Hojo dead, and if that could be accomplished while he was distracted, so much the better. 

I chose one of the joints in the carapace over his torso as a target, and launched myself into the air. Hopefully this time he wouldn't manage to get an arm or a tentacle in the way, as he had when I'd previously attempted this. 

I slashed. Connected. And something popped out through the mouth of the wound and nearly impaled me. 

My foot rose reflexively, and I was kicking at the protrusion to propel myself away before I entirely understood what I was looking at: another spike limb like those fringing Hojo's lower half. Hojo himself didn't seem to know what to make of it. He stared down at it with a confused expression on his face and tentatively touched the base of it. 

Then, as though the cut from Masamune had set off a chain reaction, more limbs forced their way through the joints in Hojo's carapace. And then bits of the carapace began to slough and more limbs popped out, until the ex-scientist resembled nothing more than a sea urchin with a skirt of tentacles. There was an expression of bewilderment on his face as it vanished into a thicket of thorny spikes. 

"This is . . . How can you be the stronger one when the major piece of you is _missing_?!" were the last words of that much-hated voice. 

My mind raced. Pronouns . . . transformations . . . Hojo had mutilated the Zirconaide materia, then absorbed it. Apparently this was his comeuppance. _And possibly ours as well,_ I reflected as a criss-crossing field of beams of force silently shot out to dissect the walls, floor, and ceiling. I dodged, knowing instinctively that they would do massive damage if they struck flesh. Somewhere off to my right, Zack yelped. Then the sound was buried by a tremendous roar as the stone surfaces around us collapsed. 

I was falling through a cloud of rubble, stone dust, and stray piercing beams. The only thing keeping me somewhat oriented was gravity, and I fought down thoughts of those who had come here with me as I leaped from rock to rock, trying to find a way upward. I could do nothing for Vincent or Genesis or Zack or Cloud or anyone else if I fell here myself. 

Rain whipped down suddenly, stinging, biting cold against exposed skin, but it cleared the worst of the dust from the air and allowed me to, at last, find a stable surface to land on, a stubby ledge jutting out from the side of the . . . crater? No, I decided, more like a shaft. The damage hadn't spread to the sides very much, but the weight of each falling floor had magnified the destruction below it. I could see the acid, glowing green of mako far below me, and the faint light of an overcast sky came down from somewhere far above. 

Hovering in the middle of the open shaft was something that now looked even more like a twenty-foot sea urchin—a ball of spiky limbs. With some tentacles still dangling down below. I saw no other sign in it of any version of Hojo, but that didn't mean he wasn't still there, even if he wasn't in control. The walls of the shaft were open to several layers of cavern. Here and there, I could see other members of our party: a group of Seconds, looking cautiously over the edge; Vincent, slumped against the wall of a half-vanished corridor with his feet dangling over the drop; Zack and Genesis, both clinging one-handed to the same knob of rock while refusing to drop their swords; Cloud, with the fingers of his left hand jammed into one crack and the tip of his boot wedged into another. Alive, all of them. 

This was going to be an awkward fight, in midair with dangling noncombatants we would have to avoid hitting, but I saw no help for it. I could have cursed Vincent's bad luck, since he and Chaos would have been the most suited of us for this sort of combat. Still, it wasn't as though we could _not_ kill this creature. If it unleashed those beams in a populated area . . . The images of buildings collapsing, of civilians clinging to the edges of a tidy, round hole in Midgar's Plate while the huge chunk of steel and concrete that had once plugged it landed on the fragile houses below, were . . . disquieting. It was SOLDIER's job—and, by extension, mine—to ensure that such things didn't happen. Preventing carnage might be the only genuinely worthwhile thing I had ever done in my life. 

Genesis let go of his handhold and kicked away from the wall, a black wing tearing from his back. Somehow it was supporting him in the air, although that shouldn't have been aerodynamically possible. Fire energy surged the length of Rapier's blade as I adjusted my grip on Masamune and flexed my knees, preparing to jump. I was going to have to entrust my weight, however briefly, to one of not-Hojo's unpleasant-looking limbs, since there was nowhere else to land. 

My attack was unsuccessful. The Zirconaide-urchin's limbs were longer than Masamune, and difficult to stab past. I barely managed to kick and flip and land back on a solid ledge. I had also noticed two things that were even more deeply disturbing. The first was that the creature was floating upward. And the second was that the mako at the distant bottom of the shaft was seething as though it were about to erupt. 

"Great Goddess," Genesis said, his voice carrying over the noise of the makofall that still ran down one wall of the shaft. "Please. We do _not_ need a WEAPON to show itself now. _Please._ " 

I remembered the Emerald WEAPON we had seen in the Banora underground. Genesis was right: we did _not_ need to have such a creature added to the volatile mix that was this fight. 

And Hojo's monster was still drifting upward. We couldn't afford to let it escape, but how could we stop it? 

I looked up again. Then down. And made a difficult decision. 

Swapping materia while balanced on a narrow ledge wasn't anything I much enjoyed doing, but in this case, I was just happy that I'd brought my entire kit with me at all. 

" _Get back!_ " I shouted the words at the top of my lungs, counted to five, and then invoked the most powerful spell my Gravity materia held. 

It pulled the Zirconaide-urchin downward. Because of the size of the creature and the tight quarters, it also latched onto the sides of the shaft and everything movable attached to them—rocks, mako, and people. Which meant two Seconds, Genesis, Zack, myself, and Cloud. I'd pushed off at an angle, and managed to intercept the young Third on the way down, gathering him to me with the arm that wasn't holding onto Masamune. 

"Hold on," I told him, and was relieved to feel him snake one hand up over my shoulder and the other under my extended left arm. 

Looking down at the surface we were rushing towards, I barely had time to cast a wind spell to push us to the left before we almost landed in the mako. I overbalanced deliberately as I canceled the gravity spell, and we crashed down mostly onto stone instead, with me on the bottom. It hurt, but I'd been expecting that, and I didn't hear the familiar wet, popping _crack_ of breaking bone. 

I had about half a second to process all of that before a mass of loose rock came thundering down all around us. I rolled, once more intent on protecting Cloud. After all, I was the one who had allowed him to come on this expedition, and he was my protege. I was responsible for him. Or that was what I would tell anyone who was foolish enough to ask. 

Fortunately, nothing large landed on top of us, although a rock I estimated at some twenty pounds glanced off my right pauldron as gravel peppered my back, and mako splashed against my boots. After a moment, the rush subsided, and I pushed myself to my feet, then offered Cloud a hand up. 

We were standing, I noted, on a chunk of stone floating some ten feet above the surface of the Lifestream—a peculiar phenomenon, to be sure. There was no light coming from above anymore, although that might just be because we were too far down. I couldn't see any of the others. I hoped no one had landed in the mako . . . but I had known that was a risk, and forced myself to take it anyway. 

The Zirconaide-urchin was floating at our level, some twenty feet away from us. But it worried me less than the shadow I could see moving below the surface of the mako. It made my instincts scream of danger. The Zirconaide-urchin must have thought so too, because it sent out a burst of beams, aimed mostly downward. I don't think any of them attained their goal, but sooner or later, it was going to get lucky. We had to deal with it before then. 

I frowned and began swapping materia again. The Gravity and Wind went back in the case, and I took out Merton and Tiamat and slotted them in instead. It was time to go all-out, whatever the risks. 

"Lieutenant Strife," I said. 

Cloud blinked. "Sir, I'm not—wait, was that supposed to be a field promotion?" 

I nodded. "Let's hope it doesn't end up being a posthumous one. I need you to get off this island." 

"Understood, sir." Cloud looked around quickly. There was another floating island to our right, about twenty feet away and slightly higher up. A running start and a hard jump got him there, and as he pulled himself up over the edge, I cast Merton. 

The heat blistered my skin and left a fine layer of char on the surface of my coat. Perhaps Vincent had been right, and I was going to have to retire this one and have another made. The Zirconaide-urchin voiced a high-pitched ululation, suggesting that I might finally have done it some real damage, along with myself. Gritting my teeth, I cast again and again until the creature landed awkwardly on another floating island with a loud thump. 

It wasn't dead, however. I'd drained nearly all my reserves of magic, and it _wasn't dead_. Hojo had always had some rather cockroachlike properties, but this was bordering on the ridiculous. 

Genesis must have noticed as well, because he came leaping in from the creature's far side with Rapier upraised, the length of the blade coated in fire. A faint, " _And your eternal slumber!_ " wafted across the mako to me as he stabbed at it, and for just a moment, I hoped that this would finish it. 

Then the creature heaved itself up, crusty black bits crumbling away to reveal quite a different form underneath, and strangled that hope in its cradle. 

This new being was not a bloated ball of limbs. It looked more like the form Hojo had taken when he had first absorbed the Zirconaide materia, but more streamlined and better put together, with a lightly armoured maroon carapace and a mantle of glowing tentacles dangling below. Impossible to tell until it attacked whether it was more or less dangerous than the previous version, but I was betting on "more". Metamorphic unique monsters usually start fights in their most defensive form, and work their way toward more powerful offense as each form is defeated. 

I gathered myself and leaped across to the floating rock Genesis was sharing with the Zirconaide creature. As soon as I landed, one of the glowing tentacles swung lazily towards me. I dodged it as I raised Masamune, but not with the greatest of care, since the tentacle didn't have enough kinetic energy behind it to harm me or even knock me off my feet. 

I didn't expect its touch to be like being hit by one of Genesis' higher-level lightning spells. I'd been eletrocuted before, of course—Hojo wouldn't have forgotten to test my resistance to such a commonplace hazard—but even with Genesis himself tossing a healing spell in that direction, it was painful to push forward through the muscle spasms, and my attack didn't land quite squarely. But it did leave a scratch behind. We could handle this version, as long as we didn't let it touch us. 

Or so I was thinking when the creature suddenly flared with light and send a spherical shockwave pulsing out. And this wasn't one of the weak ones that Hojo had generated when he had broken out of the cocoon after absorbing the Zirconaide materia. This one threw me through the air and into a wall. Not an uncommon occurrence when fighting a large, powerful monster in a confined space, but it had been a while since one had managed to throw me off with so much force. Over the roar of more rock falling, I heard a yelp and a crunch and Zack's voice saying, "S'okay, Spiky, I've got you." 

"Thanks, but . . . not quite so hard . . . need to breathe . . ." 

I found a floating rock that had survived the explosion and leaped for it. Genesis seemed to have had the same idea, because he landed beside me. 

"You do realize," he said, "that every time this _thing_ that was once our esteemed scientist breaks out one of its larger weapons, the caves get undermined a little further? And the Planet is on the verge of unleashing the Jade Weapon to contain it?" 

If Zack hadn't been busy reassuring Cloud, he probably would have said something along the lines of, _"esteemed scientist" my ass_. "That," I said, "is why I need you to start the evacuation of the upper part of the caverns. Take Strife with you. Zack and I will finish up down here." 

Genesis gave me a hard look. "Taking all the glory for yourself. Again." 

I stared right back at him. "Why would you think there was any glory to be had here? I want as many people as possible to survive, and _you_ happen to be the one who can fly. I would have a much more difficult time getting back up there quickly to start the evacuation." 

"You could fly as well, if you truly wanted to. Jenova's wings are branded into your DNA, along with all the rest of her powers. But of course, you have no core, and your cell structure is locked . . ." Genesis smirked, and I shook my head slightly, for only Genesis could have turned _mutation_ into a contest. But at the same time . . . a core . . . 

My hand reached for my pocket. I'd suspected almost since Aerith Gainsborough had placed it in my hands that the Planet had not created a protomateria for me out of mere caprice. _Gaia is offering you a choice,_ Vincent had said, quoting Chaos. A choice, yes. Between remaining as I was, and reaching for a heritage that would separate me even further from what humanity I'd ever possessed. 

And accepting the Planet's offer would have meant opening a channel between it and myself, a way for the Lifestream to shout things in my ear—that was clear from Genesis' behaviour since we'd arrived at the Crater. I'd had enough of voices inside my head with Jenova, and so I'd left the protomateria in my pocket. But now it might make the difference between killing this thing in time, and the cavern collapsing and burying everyone, leaving Hojo's last monster free to roam Gaia with no opposition. Except Jade Weapon. Which was likely to be even more dangerous than this thing, and less considerate of human lives. 

My pocket . . . wasn't there. 

I blinked, mind fumbling, as I half-heard Cloud arguing with Genesis about something. It had to have happened when my coat had torn, half a lifetime ago, up on the ledge by the makofall. The ledge which was now at the bottom of the Lifestream somewhere. 

Offer rescinded. Just when I might have been able to force myself to accept it, for the sake of those around me. It was . . . laughable. 

" _General! General Sephiroth!_ " 

My head snapped up as I realized that Cloud was screaming my name. He was also trying to pull his wrist out of the grip of an annoyed-looking Genesis, although at his level of enhancement, he hadn't a prayer of actually getting free. 

" _Catch!_ " 

Something small and sparkling lofted from Cloud's free hand, and I snatched it from the air before realizing that it was the missing protomateria. 

So. And so. 

"Over here, ugly!" Zack was drawing the monster's attention with a Hell Thundaga while Genesis poised himself to lift off, a no-longer-struggling Cloud held against him. And up above, just barely visible, a groggy Vincent was standing with one arm around Veld's neck, leaning precariously forward and struggling to hold his gun steady so that he could squeeze off a shot. 

Everything I wanted to defend was here, fighting for survival. Elfe had once asked me why I fought. I hadn't had an answer for her then, but now, I knew. 

I pressed the protomateria to my chest and equipped it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest, I suspect that the whole Minerva thing was not so much Hojo's _original_ plot as something he came up with while he was slowly losing his mind to mutation, but I have no desire to try to wedge myself further into his head in order to find out.


	74. Chapter 74

**Zack**

There weren't any fanfares when it happened. No loud noises, no energy cocoons. Seph barely even moved, at least at first. But there was this . . . force . . . radiating out from around him that hadn't been there before. It made it hard to breathe. 

It got the monster's attention, anyway. It turned to face Seph just as he _did_ move. Sort of. Wings erupted from his back. _Six_ jet-black wings, in proper pairs, none of that all-on-one-side thing like what had happened to poor Angeal. 

He looked like that carving Vincent had found in Wutai, of Jenova-before-the-virus. And yet . . . not. Seph's always been kind of, well, _sober_ , and even with the details mostly worn away, you could tell that the carving had had a more intense expression on her face. 

The wings snapped out wide as he leaped into the air and hung there, hovering. Masamune danced, leaving a silver tracery in the air that slammed into the Zirconaide-thing, sort of like a Long Range materia on enhancement drugs . . . except that I'd never seen Seph equip a Long Range. Normally, he just used his strength and agility to close with whatever he was fighting. 

In his other hand, he held . . . blackness. Intense blackness like the guts of a black hole, that made his glove look pale around the edges of its globelike shape. When he spread his fingers, it rolled casually off his palm and flew toward the Zirconaide-thing. 

There was a massive _fwomph_ and then every shadow in the area vanished for half a second as everything went absolutely silent—I couldn't even hear the makofall anymore. It felt like I was inside a cheap video game. The good part, though, was that the Zirconaide-thing had a black spike rammed straight through it, chest to back, like one of those bugs they'd had on display in the science room in elementary school. There was no way it was surviving that. 

Or, well, that's what I thought, but that was because I'd half-forgotten it was one of those stupid shape-changing unique monsters that you have to defeat sixty different ways before they die. When the black spike faded and the other shadows and background noises came back, the Zirconaide-thing started to wrap itself in another cocoon, but it was pretty slow—you could tell it was hurting. And Seph, being Seph, didn't give it a chance to finish. He flew up above the thing and pointed Masamune straight down and folded all his wings in close. I'd seen him do a similar move before in spars a couple of times, but that was never from more than ten feet up, and he had more like thirty to work with this time, _plus_ there was black energy suddenly crackling the length of Masamune's blade. 

When he hit his target, there was this circular green shockwave that brought down a bunch more rock as well as messily exploding the guts of the creature inside the incomplete energy cocoon. Green goop all over the place, and chunks of the Zirconaide-thing fell into the Lifestream. Well, mostly into the Lifestream. I used the flat of the Buster Sword to give a couple of chunks that had landed near me a little nudge off the island I was standing on. The Lifestream swallowed them up without so much as a plopping noise. None of it evaporated into green, though. I guess there was still enough Hojo in there that it didn't quite count as a monster that way. 

Seph got rid of Masamune somehow—she didn't end up back on his harness, and he didn't drop her, so I don't know where she went—and then landed beside me. 

"Are you okay?" I asked instantly. 

"For the time being. Put your sword up and find some way to hold on that doesn't obstruct my wings. I'd like to catch up with the others, if at all possible." 

That _for the time being_ had sounded a little too offhand to me, but I knew now wasn't the time to question it. I slid the Buster Sword back into place on my harness and went over to stand in front of Seph, so that I could put one arm over his shoulder and eel the other one in under his right arm, between the bases of his top and middle wings, and grab each wrist with the other hand. 

"You sure you can lift me?" I said. 

Seph sighed. "Yes, Zack, I am sure I can lift you." 

"How? I mean, it isn't like you ever— _whoa!_ " 

I guess Seph didn't want to answer that question, because he jumped into the air and spread his wings . . . and we were flying. I could feel his muscles working as he flapped, and I wondered how the wings were attached. Probably not the regular way, unless they'd made holes in his coat. 

It took a couple of minutes for us to get up to around the level of the AVALANCHE facility, and actually it was kind of . . . boring. I mean, it wasn't like we were really going anywhere, just heading straight up the shaft. Seph might as well have been an elevator. With feathers and leather upholstery and one of those scenic windows if I dared look a little sideways, sure, but still just an elevator. Flying in the open air would have been a lot more interesting. 

"Next time—if there _is_ a next time—don't _wriggle_ ," Seph said as we set down on a ledge, but he wasn't glaring, just kinda frowning at nothing. Which he did pretty often. He shook his wings out, giving me a faceful of feathers when he opened them up as far as they would go, and then folded them, drawing them in and in and in until they disappeared (nope, no holes in his coat). When they were gone, he wobbled a bit and touched his forehead with one hand before he steadied again. 

I blinked, and Vince was suddenly there by his elbow, looking worried—on purpose, I bet, or at least he was letting us see it on purpose. I mean, Turks, right? But at least it looked like Vince had recovered from whatever Fuhito had shot him full of. 

Seph gave Vince a look I don't have the words for and said, "Genesis was right: the Lifestream babbles constantly, worse than Hojo when he has—or had—something on his mind. I suppose I will eventually learn how to prevent it from affecting me. For the time being, however, I think I would prefer to return to the surface." And get further away from the green stuff, right. 

"Is he dead?" Vince asked. 

"I tore the thing he became into shreds and dumped them into the Lifestream. If anything of him survives, it's the Planet's problem now." Seph paused for half a second, then added, "I apologize for stealing your kill." 

"You had the greater right," Vince said, and shrugged a bit. 

No hugs, no kisses. It was nothing like what Aerith and I would have done when we got back together after a mission. But I guess it worked for them. 

I cleared my throat to remind them I was there. "Weren't we supposed to be catching up with the others?" I said when they turned to look at me. 

"A few minutes won't matter," Vincent said, but we got moving anyway. 

It didn't take long to catch up—I mean, we were three of the most enhanced guys on the Planet, and the medical team weren't enhanced at all—but I could have done without Kunsel taking me aside and asking me what had happened to the two guys who had fallen down the shaft with us. I hadn't expected to be the one to have to tell him that they'd both landed in the mako. I was . . . still working on that part of being an officer. Although really, I don't think there's anyone who doesn't hate that part. Even Seph took the loss of someone under his command as a personal failure, though he might never have spoken to them. 

Leaving the caves should have been quicker than entering, since we weren't feeling our way anymore, but we had a couple of problems. For one, it was all uphill. For another, we were carrying an unconscious Rufus Shinra (who might never wake up again—the medics weren't sure) and escorting two prisoners. And every so often, we'd feel a little cave-quake as some part of the structure down below us fell in. 

Seph didn't let us stop for the night until we'd gone two hours without any more quakes, which meant we probably weren't directly above the AVALANCHE base anymore. By then it was one in the morning, and we were all dead-dog tired. Even Shears barely had the energy to curse as the Turks prodded him along. 

Aerith and I cuddled up together in a nest of blankets, not caring what anyone thought. Besides, it had meant that Aerith could give part of her bedroll to Tifa, who had nothing except the clothes on her back. The Turks had taken some extra blankets from the AVALANCHE facility for Rufus and Elfe, but no one had thought of Tifa at the time. And as for Shears, I don't think anyone cared whether or not he froze his butt off. 

We were too tired to talk much, and not comfortable enough to sleep long. When I woke up and checked my PHS, it told me it was six-thirty. I tried to let myself drift off again, but I wasn't tired enough anymore to ignore the rock digging into my hip. So I just cuddled Aerith closer and hoped that she, at least, would be able to get a bit more sleep. 

I should've known better. Than to move at all, I mean. The moment she whispered, "The Lifestream's a lot quieter now," I realized I had woken her up. 

"I hope so. I mean, we got rid of the Big Bad, right? So things should be better," I whispered back. 

"According to the Lifestream, it isn't Hojo who's the Big Bad, though. It's the reactors." 

" . . . Oh." I mean, what else could I say? I knew she was right. "Well, they're already trying to do something about that—they wanted me to talk to some alternative energy guy in Cosmo Canyon before everything went south, remember? And if Rufus still has any of Shenlong left in his head, I'd bet he'll want to chip in. The Planet must have been gabbling at him the whole time he was carrying that materia around inside him, right? Seph can hear it now too, although he didn't seem all that happy about it. Was that why the Planet gave him the protomateria in the first place? I mean, did it expect him to . . . ?" I made a kind of waving gesture in the direction of my chest. 

"Probably. Or at least, it seems much happier about the General than it was the first time I met him." 

A thought skittered across my mind and fell out my mouth. "Say, does that mean Seph's actually a materia now?" 

Aerith giggled. "I think so. It does sound silly, though, doesn't it?" 

"I don't know." Actually, when I thought about it, a Sephiroth Summon would be downright scary, even if the only thing it did was the drop down-plus-shockwave attack he'd used on the Zirconaide-thing. "Better him than me. I'd make a horrible Summon. And Genesis would never let me hear the end of it." 

My girl had one hand practically stuffed in her mouth to keep from waking up anyone else with her giggling now. When she'd managed to get control of herself again, she said, "I like you just the way you are." 

"And I'm glad you do," I admitted. Someone in here somewhere was making coffee. "Ugh. I guess it's time to get up." 

"My mother always says that the sooner you start something, the sooner you finish it," Aerith said with a smile. "I guess it works for climbing out of a cave, too." 

Breakfast was ration bars again, which sucked, but at least we had coffee. And Reno waved his shock-stick in Shears' direction the moment the man started cursing, and shut him up. 

All the Turks were a bit on edge, but I heard Rufus had woken up for a few minutes to eat. I figured that was a good sign. 

Seph shook up the order of march a bit, putting me on point with Genesis . . . and, surprisingly, Cloud. Seph himself was bringing up the rear with Vince. I guess they had a lot to talk about. Or be silent about and communicate with their eyebrows, or whatever. They were going to be the quietest damned couple in history, but hey, if it worked for them . . . Really, it was a relief to see Seph reaching out to people a bit. There had been a time when I'd been afraid he was going to lose his mind just because he spent so much of his time alone. And 'Geal _had_ made me promise to take care of him. 

"Hey, Zack?" Cloud broke in on my thoughts suddenly. "Do you know anything about engineering?" 

Wait, what? "Well, I know how to spell it." 

Cloud rolled his eyes. "Not what I meant. Who would?" 

"In this crew? You could try Tuesti's cat-on-a-moogle critter. Seph would know some stuff too, but just from books. Why?" 

"I think I may have an idea. But if it's stupid, or someone thought of it already, I'd like to find out before I make too much of a fool of myself." Cloud flushed slightly as he spoke. 

"Okay, okay. Hey, Cait Sith! Can we talk to you for a moment?" I waved my arm to get the critter's attention, ignoring the mortified way Cloud looked at me. He was still such a teenager sometimes. 

_Since when am I thinking like an old guy?_ I wondered. I mean, even Seph wasn't old enough to go around thinking stuff like that. Vince probably was, though. If he'd been Veld's partner, they were probably close to the same age, and that would make him . . . forty? _Fifty?_ And Seph wasn't twenty-five yet, if I'd done the math right. Funny, how the two of them being together didn't seem squicky. Maybe it was because Seph _acted_ so much older than he was. 

"'Tis good to see you again, laddie, but I'm curious—what would you want to talk to me about?" asked the crowned cat, whose stuffed moogle was now bouncing along near my elbow somewhere. 

"Not me," I explained. "Cloud?" 

Cait Sith swiveled its head to look at Spiky. "And what can I do for you, laddie?" 

"Um, I've got a couple of questions. They might be a bit weird . . ." 

"No stranger than others I've had since joining this band, I'd warrant. Ask away." 

"Well . . ." Cloud ran his hand through his hair. "An electrical generator can work by spinning a magnet, right?" 

I blinked. I think Cait Sith did too. "'Tis a considerable simplification, lad, but aye, that's one way of making one. Less efficient than using mako directly, but then everything is." 

"And the mako reactors are located in places where the Lifestream is near the surface, right? And the Lifestream . . . moves. Like a river." 

The robot cat twitched a bit. "I think I see what you're getting at," Reeve Tuesti's voice suddenly said from the robot, "but please spell it out." 

Cloud swallowed visibly, but he said, "Can we retrofit the existing mako reactors to use the _motion_ of the mako to make power? Instead of burning it up? Wouldn't that be easier than having to figure out how to use the stuff Cosmo Canyon's got on a much larger scale? I mean, they didn't seem to _use_ all that much electricity when I was there. Midgar . . . isn't like that." 

"It's an interesting idea," Reeve said slowly. "And one with several advantages. It would be much the same as building turbines for hydroelectric generation, and that's a proven technology. We'd need to do some work on materials, of course—a standard hydro turbine wouldn't last long submerged in mako—but we already know the properties we need. And it would let us continue to use the existing infrastructure to regulate and distribute the electricity . . . I think you may have something here. Something with potential. Thank you . . . Soldier Strife, was it?" 

"Yes, um, sir." 

"I'll remember. Right now, though, I'm going to turn things back over to Cait Sith before I drain his batteries completely." 

Cait Sith lurched again, while Cloud gave me a glance that was only slightly panicked. "That was President Tuesti, wasn't it?" 

"Sure sounded like him," I said. And, noticing that flush starting up again, "Cloud. You did good. In fact, you might just have saved the whole Planet. That makes you the biggest hero here." 

Sure enough, he turned bright red. "I am not!" 

I laughed, and after a moment, Cloud started to laugh too, a bit sheepishly. 

Maybe neither of us was ever going to be another Sephiroth, but that didn't mean we couldn't be heroes in our own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rufus is okay (physically, at any rate), I promise. We'll be hearing from him again, um, in a few weeks or so.


	75. Chapter 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW chapter. Those not interested in those bits probably want to skip from "Come closer" down to the last two paragraphs.

**Vincent**

When I emerged, bare-chested and barefoot, from the bathroom after the first hot shower I'd been able to have since returning from the Northern Crater, I was a bit surprised to find Sephiroth, shirtless and with his hair still damp from his own shower, draped over the bland beige couch in the living room of my apartment, reading something on his PHS. He put the device aside immediately when I entered the room. 

"I apologize if it was . . . forward of me to enter your home without invitation," he said, luminous green eyes fixed on my face. 

I shook my head. "You're always welcome here." I perched on the arm of the couch nearest his head—not the most comfortable seat, but the closeness made up for it. "I did invite you to move in, after all." 

"So you did." 

I brought my good hand to rest on his shoulder, fingers tangling in silver hair, and waited for him to broach whatever subject he had come here to discuss. We were a terrible match that way, both far too quiet for our own good. 

"I'm . . . confused," he admitted after a long pause. And touched his chest. 

"The protomateria?" I asked, based on that tiny gesture. 

He nodded. "I don't . . ." Another long pause. "This is difficult," he admitted. "My ability to explain sensations and emotions is poor." 

I silently chalked up another black mark against Hojo. Who was dead now, and thus unavailable for revenge. We would just have to pick up the pieces as best we could, and that would take time. 

«You have eternity,» Chaos observed from inside me. «Both you and your pretty mate.» 

That was another thing I really didn't want to think about. I'd been growing accustomed to not being quite human, but the prospect of living forever still frightened me. I wasn't sure I would be able to remain sane under such a burden. If I could be said to be sane now. 

"When I took in the protomateria, it felt . . . like I had just completed a broken circuit," Sephiroth said slowly. "A connection that had always been meant to be there, a sudden flow of force . . . I do not entirely understand what I gained at that moment. Or what I might have lost. The Lifestream babbles incessantly in the back of my mind, saying everything and nothing, and I . . ." He paused again, and I waited. "All my life, I have been someone's slave, in fact if not in name. I had only recently begun to understand that I might be . . . free. But now . . . I wonder if I am _its_ slave." 

My hand moved to his head, and he leaned into the touch as I began to lightly massage his scalp. A tiny movement, but it said so very much. "I don't think so," I told him. "From what I understand, the whole point of creating the Immortalis was to generate beings with free will, rather than more WEAPONs to move purely at the Planet's command. The original Immortalis spent much of their lives among the Cetra and most likely shared the same relationship to the Planet, but Jenova was able to tear herself free of that. She wasn't the Planet's slave, which makes it . . . exceedingly unlikely . . . that you are either." 

" _Ah._ " It was only the least breath of sound, the least hint of relaxation as the tension drained out of him. 

"You might consider what kind of future you want for yourself," I added. "Do we stay with Shinra? Or would you like to take up some of those opportunities Hojo tried so hard to deny you? Change careers, or study something other than how to kill?" 

"You intend to stay with me? Even if the future I choose is not to your liking?" 

"Yes." I could have spun a more elaborate explanation, but it seemed to me that the single, bald word was sufficient here. 

Another long pause. "It occurs to me that it will be a long time before I can . . . fade away into a different life. If it ever becomes possible at all. I can't even walk down the street without being recognized, unless I go to great trouble to disguise myself." 

"We could build a cabin up on the Northern Continent somewhere." It wasn't a real suggestion, although I couldn't help thinking that it might not be so bad—just the two of us, and the quiet of the winter wastes outside. No one demanding our time or attention, or asking us to kill anyone. 

"At one time that might well have been everything my heart desired, but now . . . it would disappoint them, I think. Cloud, certainly. And Zack. And perhaps even Genesis. Furthermore, the abnormal monsters are not going to suddenly stop appearing because we rid ourselves of Hojo. Protecting people is one of the few worthwhile things I've ever learned how to do. For the time being, I intend to remain here, and continue as I have done since the war." There was a long pause before he added, "I think that, eventually, I may attempt to pry SOLDIER from Shinra's grasp and turn it into a pure monster-hunting and peace-keeping force, never again to be used in a war between human nations. However, there are a number of things that need to be worked out before I can do that, mostly in the areas of logistics and funding." 

"It's a good plan," I said. 

"More of a dream than a plan at this point . . . Angeal always used to say that dreams were important." A hint of a wry smile ghosted across his face. "I wish he had lived to see this day." 

"I wish your mother had," I admitted. "She would have been proud of you, I think." 

"Perhaps." He reached up and brushed an errant strand of hair from my face. "Vincent?" 

"Hm?" 

"Come closer. I . . . would like . . . to touch you." He kept looking at me, even as his voice became hesitant, the words catching in his throat. 

I ended up in his lap, for reasons that seemed good at the time. It was comfortable, warm skin pressed to warm skin, his lips lightly touching my collarbone while I ran my hands through his hair. He still tasted the same when we kissed, still smelled of leather and metal and mako even when freshly bathed, still gave me the impression of silk over hard-forged mithril when I touched his arms and chest. 

His breath hitched as I ran the thumb of my good hand over one nipple. "Do that again," he demanded, and I obeyed without thought. I could hear his heartbeat speed up as I lavished my attention on the little nub, and against my thigh . . . 

I had to shift my weight to get my hand down there and confirm what I thought I was feeling: a full, firm mass under his leathers that grew and hardened more as I stroked it. 

He voiced something like a sob, and when I looked back at his face, his eyes were closed. He was hiding from me. But then, the unknown is frightening, and he had been trained never to show fear. 

"You have an erection," I explained in the baldest terms possible—this wasn't a good time for a misunderstanding—and Sephiroth had the oddest expression on his face as his eyes popped open again. 

«He's complete now,» Chaos offered inside my head, and then I understood everything except how the presence or absence of a materia inside someone's body could affect such a basic biological process. 

"Is that what it is? It feels . . ." He shifted underneath me, as though uncomfortable. "Why would anyone want this? Why would you enjoy it?" 

"It's less uncomfortable without the leather in the way. Let me show you." 

His eyes narrowed, but he looked at me and nodded, just once. 

I slid down onto my knees on the floor and unfastened his belt, then his trousers, and guided his erection gently into the open air. Sephiroth stared at his penis as though he had never seen it before, which I suppose wasn't entirely unjustified. I stroked it lightly, and saw him swallow. 

"It's . . . sensitive," he said in a low voice. "Which, I suppose, is only to be expected." 

"Do you want me to stop?" I asked. Now that it had come to this, I wanted him to have the best first experience possible, which would be difficult if he were reluctant or unnerved. 

"No." Unexpectedly firm, but then one thing he never seemed to be was indecisive. 

I kept my gaze on his face as I began to stroke more steadily, more firmly, and noted the parted lips and the tiny gasps and the way his eyes were getting heavy-lidded. He was beautiful like this. 

"More," he demanded, and I lowered my head to take him into my mouth. It wasn't something I'd done in the past quarter-century, and I fumbled a bit and almost choked myself before I remembered how to go about it, how to adjust things so that I could breathe. Sephiroth wasn't exactly small. But my fumbling ministrations drew a low moan from him, and when I dared divide my attention to glance up again, he had the most extraordinary expression on his face. Unguarded, and far gone in pleasure. Seeing him like that made me shift my weight to relieve the pressure on my own erection. 

I was the only person who had ever seen him this way. I might be the only person who ever would. 

«Of course you will be. He's yours, and humans mate for life, don't you?» 

I wasn't about to stop and explain human "mating" to Chaos right now, but I made a mental note to go into it in depth sometime. Some _other_ time. I couldn't _forget_ about the other inhabitants of my body right now, not with the Galian Beast growling approval on top of Chaos' commentary, but I was doing my best to push them to the back of my mind. 

Better to be with someone my monsters approved of than with someone they hated, though, since I was stuck with them. 

Sephiroth's hand had come to rest on top of my head, and it fisted as I went down on him again, tangling in my hair and pulling at it. But the pain just made everything feel more right. I'd fantasized about being dominated and even punished by Sephiroth; this was one tiny step in a direction that I craved. And there would come a time when he would give me what I wanted—he had a naturally dominant streak that made that inevitable. Not yet, though. It might take years, but we would have those years. Together. 

A future. What an odd concept. I had a future that didn't involve hiding away from the world in a coffin to keep my inner companions out of circulation. SOLDIER might be full of monsters, but for me, that was what made it a safe place to be. 

All of that passed through my mind in a flash as I nursed on Sephiroth's erection and let it leak salty, mako-stinging fluid down my throat. I was fascinated by the subtle expressions that chased each other across his face. 

_I love you. More than anything. Broken and haunted as I am—as we both are._

I pressed in even closer, until my nose was touching pale skin and fine, silvery hair, and sucked harder, working my tongue against the underside of his erection, and Sephiroth made a low noise somewhere between a growl and a moan, and came. I swallowed—I couldn't ever remember having done that before, but here and now, it felt right, that and the mako stinging in my throat. 

I held him in my mouth until he was completely soft, and then gently released him so that I could tuck him back inside his leathers. When I looked up again at his face, his expression had turned introspective. 

"I think I understand now," he said, and there were hands on my shoulders, pulling me up onto the couch. He kissed me deeply, and I saw his eyebrows rise slightly as he tasted himself on my tongue. Then I was inexorably pushed back until I was lying under him, even as he said, "I don't know if I can . . ." 

"Just your hands will be fine." _I'm not going to ask you for more than you want to give._ Sephiroth had already had enough of that in his life. "But . . . if you can . . . talk to me." 

"About what?" 

"I don't really care. I just want to hear your voice." 

I hadn't bothered putting the broad SOLDIER belt back on, so Sephiroth only had to undo a button and open a zipper to expose my boxers, and then tug those down a little. 

"Vincent," he murmured, his voice low and dark and velvety, as he looked down at me with heavy-lidded eyes. I wasn't completely nude, but I was still naked before him in all the ways that mattered. "Is this what you wanted?" 

" _Yes._ " It came out sounding rougher than usual. 

"Good." He leaned down and kissed my lips, my throat, the hollow of my collarbone, letting a wave of silver hair cascade across my chest. "Because I still have only the vaguest idea of what I'm doing," he added in a near whisper, which teased an unexpected, rusty laugh from me. 

"No one would know that if you didn't tell them," I said as his hands slid over my torso in slow, precise motions that weren't at all tentative, and sent sparks straight to my groin. 

"I'm operating mostly on instinct." He was still leaning over me, and I arched my back so that I could rub my aching erection against his body. "Did you know? From the moment we met, you've been impossible for me to ignore." His tongue lapped at me, tasting skin and scars with what seemed to be equal pleasure, equal desire. "I didn't understand why at first. Only that you got under my skin. Only that I didn't want anyone else to touch you." This time, when I arched, he brought his body down to meet mine. "I didn't think that I was capable of this. Of desire. Of . . . love." 

"Sephiroth . . ." My fingers tangled in long strands of silver as I felt the leaking tip of my cock slide over leather, and then over skin. 

"Vincent. If not for you, I think I would still be alone." His hand slid between my legs, curling around my eager erection. I bucked up into it as he shifted his grip to stroke me more firmly. "Now. Come for me." 

That dark velvet voice of his . . . he had only to speak to me in those tones, and I was gone. I groaned, and thrust up again into his hand, and came all over us both. It flashed through my mind that he was going to smell of me, that every SOLDIER would know . . . and that I not only didn't care, I was glad that he would let me mark him, even in so subtle a way. 

I tucked a wayward strand of silver behind his ear and sank backwards into the couch cushions. "The invitation to move in still stands," I said. 

"And I may just take you up on it," he said, before leaning down to capture my mouth with his once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original version of this from all those years ago, they _were_ going to go hide out on the Nothern Continent. Maybe it's just as well that I didn't write that one.
> 
> Anyway, I'm aware there are still a lot of dangling loose ends now that we've reached Chapter the Last. Don't worry, there's more coming. However, I'm going to take a few days off from posting. I'll put up one or both of the one-shots from this universe next week.


End file.
